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Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse: Just Do the Math This equation could spell your doom: (bN)(S/N)Z = bSZ. That is, if you ever found yourself in the midst of a zombie pandemic. That's because the calculation describes the rate of zombie transmission, from one walking dead individual to many, according to its creators, Robert J. Smith?, a mathematics professor at the University of Ottawa who spells his name with a "?" at the end, and his students. Smith's work has inspired other researchers to create zombie mathematical models, which will be published with Smith's work in the upcoming book, "Mathematical Modeling...

The Ebola virus can spread through the air from pigs to macaques, a new study suggests. Transmission of the virus — which causes an often fatal hemorrhagic fever in people and primates — was thought to require direct contact with body fluids from an infected animal or person. But in the new study, published online November 15 in Scientific Reports, piglets infected with Ebola passed the virus to macaques housed in the same room even though the animals never touched. “The evidence that the virus got from a pig to a monkey through a respiratory route is good,” says Glenn...

The Virus that Inspired the Whole Zombie Genre Zombies have come to dominate pop culture — and the explanations for their origins range from dark magic to strange satellites. But the concept of zombies has been around for thousands of years — and it looks like the idea originally came from the world of epidemiology, not the world of legends. Biting, fear of light, speechlessness, and the intense aggression that most zombie movies display all come from a single source; rabies. Take a look at the original "rage virus." While some zombie movies go for the uncanny — emphasizing the...

Enlarge Image An advisory committee that met yesterday to consider the design of the struggling National Children's Study (NCS) came down firmly in favor of one option: The study should recruit children from a geographic sample that represents the entire U.S. population. But whether the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will go with that plan isn't yet clear. Proposed by Congress 12 years ago, NCS aims to enroll 100,000 pregnant women and follow their babies' health from before birth to age 21. In February, NIH announced that because the original plan to recruit women from certain addresses in 105...

(English-language translation) A septuagenarian missionary became the first person to import the dangerous cholera bacterium to Puerto Rico in over a century. Confirmation was done by the Department of Health, following protocol which requires that confirmed cholera cases be reported within 24 hours. The man, whom the Department of Health only identified as a missionary who lives in the northern part of the island, traveled to the Dominican Republic two weeks ago to do work in an area where hygienic conditions were not the best. "He is a person who travels to the Dominican Republic frequently," State Epidemiologist Carmen Deseda...

White people in the United States die of drug overdoses more often than other ethnic groups. Black people are hit proportionately harder by AIDS, strokes and heart disease. And American Indians are more likely to die in car crashes. To shed more light on the ills of America’s poor — and occasionally its rich — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday released its first report detailing racial disparities in a broad array of health problems. While some are well known, others have had little attention; there were also a few surprises. The agency did not delve into...

After five years of lying low, Legionnaire's disease - a potentially fatal lung infection - returned to the small city of Alcoi, Spain, on July 21, 2009. > This microbe lives in fresh water nearly everywhere, and it becomes a problem only when inhaled as a fine spray or aerosol. (Legionella is harmless if you drink it.) Outbreaks are usually traced back to man-made supplies of warm water, such as water cooling systems, fountains, hot tubs, even showers. > Investigations into Legionella outbreaks are difficult, according to Dr. Lauri Hicks, a medical epidemiologist in the respiratory-diseases branch of the Centers...

Beware of Gonorrhea Lectim The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of Sexually Transmitted Disease. The disease is contracted through dangerous and high-risk behavior, especially in areas high in polling places. The disease is called “Gonorrhea Lectim”. And pronounced "gonna re-elect ‘em." Many victims showed symptoms of it in 2008. Yet after having been screwed repeatedly during the past year or so Naturalists and Epidemiologists are amazed at how destructive this disease has become since it is readily apparent to most of the general public but not reported in the liberal media. However,...

LONDON (Reuters) – Exposure to a chemical found in plastic containers is linked to heart disease, scientists said on Wednesday, confirming earlier findings and adding to pressure to ban its use in bottles and food packaging. > The analysis also confirmed that BPA plays a role in diabetes and some forms of liver disease, said Melzer's team, who studied data on 1,493 people aged 18 to 74. > U.S. government toxicologists at the National Institutes of Health concluded in 2008 that BPA presents concern for harmful effects on development of the prostate and brain and for behavioral changes in fetuses,...

QUEENSLAND researchers believe they have found a way to to control the spread of dengue fever, which afflicts more than 50 million people worldwide every year. The team at the University of Queensland's (UQ) School of Biological Sciences, led by Professor Scott O'Neill, is investigating infecting mosquitoes that transmit dengue fever with a bacterium that shortens their lifespan, limiting their ability to infect humans with the dengue virus. Professor O'Neill said this approach may be even more effective than first thought. "In a surprising development we have found that mosquitoes carrying this bacterium - known as Wolbachia - are resistant...

Abstract The epidemiology of influenza swarms with incongruities, incongruities exhaustively detailed by the late British epidemiologist...propose a parsimonious theory explaining why influenza is, ..."seemingly unmindful of traditional infectious disease behavioral patterns." Recent discoveries indicate vitamin D upregulates the endogenous antibiotics of innate immunity and suggest that the incongruities explored by Hope-Simpson may be secondary to the epidemiology of vitamin D deficiency. We identify – and attempt to explain – nine influenza conundrums: (1) Why is influenza both seasonal and ubiquitous and where is the virus between epidemics? (2) Why are the epidemics so explosive? (3) Why do they end so...

Does HIV mean certain death? In the quarter century since the world was introduced to the idea that a new sexually transmitted virus was the cause of Aids, HIV has been generally regarded as one of the biggest killers of our time. HIV/Aids has not been the mass disease in Britain that people were led to believe in the 1980s, but the death toll from immune deficiency diseases ascribed to HIV in Africa has been staggering. The scale of death there is an ongoing tragedy that tests the moral resolve of the rich world. How much do we care? Enough...

MINNEAPOLIS — Ayub Abdi is a cute 5-year-old with a smile that might be called shy if not for the empty look in his eyes. He does not speak. When he was 2, he could say “Dad,” “Mom,” “give me” and “need water,” but he has lost all that. He does scream and spit, and he moans a loud “Unnnnh! Unnnnh!” when he is unhappy. At night he pounds the walls for hours, which led to his family’s eviction from their last apartment. As he is strapped into his seat in the bus that takes him to special education class,...

Two new studies hint at the public-health and research potential of mining the data created as people search the web. Both teams have successfully detected the onset of US seasonal flu epidemics, by extracting patterns of flu-related search terms from the billions of queries stored by Google and Yahoo. The work tested the hypothesis that people will more frequently search the Internet using flu-related terms when they get sick. One group used Google's search-query logs, the other Yahoo's. Together they generated strikingly concordant findings: patterns of searches matched almost perfectly with official flu surveillance data — and often weeks in...

In 430 B.C., a new and deadly disease—its cause remains a mystery—swept into Athens. The walled Greek city-state was teeming with citizens, soldiers and refugees of the war then raging between Athens and Sparta. As streets filled with corpses, social order broke down. Over the next three years, the illness returned twice and Athens lost a third of its population. It lost the war too. The Plague of Athens marked the beginning of the end of the Golden Age of Greece. The Plague of Athens is one of 10 historically notable outbreaks described in an article in The Lancet Infectious...

In "Hyping Health Risks," Geoffrey Kabat, an epidemiologist himself, shows how activists, regulators and scientists distort or magnify minuscule environmental risks. He duly notes the accomplishments of epidemiology, such as uncovering the risks of tobacco smoking and the dangers of exposure to vinyl chloride and asbestos. And he acknowledges that industry has attempted to manipulate science. But he is concerned about a less reported problem: "The highly charged climate surrounding environmental health risks can create powerful pressure for scientists to conform and to fall into line with a particular position." Mr. Kabat looks at four claims -- those trying to...

An eastern Kentucky school district with one confirmed case of antibiotic-resistant staph infection plans to shut down all 23 of its schools Monday, affecting about 10,300 students, to disinfect the facilities. The project will involve disinfecting classrooms, restrooms, cafeterias, hallways, locker rooms, buses and even external areas such as playgrounds and sports fields, said Roger Wagner, superintendent of Pike County schools. "We're not closing schools because there's been a large number of breakouts, but as a preventive measure," Wagner said. One Pike County student was diagnosed with in September with MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The bacterial strain can be...

Once upon a time, women took estrogen only to relieve the hot flashes, sweating, vaginal dryness and the other discomforting symptoms of menopause. In the late 1960s, thanks in part to the efforts of Robert Wilson, a Brooklyn gynecologist, and his 1966 best seller, “Feminine Forever,” this began to change, and estrogen therapy evolved into a long-term remedy for the chronic ills of aging. Menopause, Wilson argued, was not a natural age-related condition; it was an illness, akin to diabetes or kidney failure, and one that could be treated by taking estrogen to replace the hormones that a woman’s ovaries...

A mysterious illness at a Del Rio detention center that has killed two inmates and hospitalized two others within the past month has baffled health authorities, who have asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for help. All four men — three of them foreign nationals from Honduras and Mexico held on immigration charges, the fourth a Val Verde county prisoner who was one of the dead — were described as in their 20s and 30s, and apparently healthy when they arrived at the Val Verde Correctional Facility and County Jail. The privately operated 850-bed medium-security facility is under...

Abstract For 10 years the World Health Organisation has had a single answer to the deadly threat of tuberculosis (TB)—provide treatment to smear positive patients and watch them take it. In contrast with confident statements about how global TB would be brought under control when directly observed therapy, short course (DOTS) was introduced, TB continues to rise worldwide. The introduction of selected multiple drug resistant TB treatment programmes, "DOTS-Plus", although important, also focuses on therapy for active TB. HIV endemic countries in particular have experienced tremendous increases in TB despite having DOTS programmes. A critical review of recent epidemiological data...