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The World May Have to Live With Ebola Forever – UN

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The World May Have to Live Ebola Forever - UN
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The United Nations repeated its calls for immediate aid, saying that response efforts must be hundreds of times greater than they currently are in order to meet the threat of an epidemic that, the UN has stated, was outstripping all current efforts. The UN warned that without much higher levels of response, the world would have to live with the Ebola virus forever.

“The world has never seen anything like it. Time is our enemy. The virus is far ahead of us,” said Anthony Banbury, head of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER).

“The world must now act to help the people and governments of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia,” said Banbury. “Failing to help will lead to unpredictable but very dire consequences for the people of the countries and well beyond. As long as there is once case of Ebola in any of these three countries, no country is safe. We must rise to the occasion. We must defeat this disease.”

“We have an illness where there were 300 cases in March, where there were more than 6000 cases in September,” said President of Doctors Without Borders USA, Dean Marchbein, “and the World Health Organization is estimating that if nothing is done by February, there will be 1.4 million cases.”

The threat of Ebola is international, according to the UN. UN General Assembly (UNGA) President Sam Kutesa said that Ebola could quickly spread to other nations. “Ebola is a threat that can easily land at any nation’s doorstep,” said Kutesa at a recent meeting.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Risk Assessment, “In the current outbreak, infected travelers have crossed land borders with neighboring countries or have traveled internationally. More EVD cases might be exported to non-affected countries.”

Dr. David Nabarro, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Ebola, said of the current outbreak, “I’ve worked as a public health doctor for 35 years… but I have never encountered a public health crisis like this in my life.”

Nabarro and other UN officials called for immediate, coordinated international efforts and funding of at least a billion dollars to combat the immediate threat of Ebola, saying that without this level of response, “it will be impossible to get this disease quickly under control, and the world will have to live with the Ebola virus forever.”

By James Haleavy

Source: UN

WHO Update on Ebola: “The situation is worse than it was 12 days ago–It’s entrenched”

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WHO Update on Ebola The situation is worse than it was 12 days ago--It's entrenched
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WHO officials provided an update Friday on the progress of the Ebola epidemic gripping West Africa and outpacing all efforts to control it. The WHO warned that without immediate, concerted action Ebola could become a global pandemic on the scale of HIV, and added that the current response was only half of what it needed to be.

“The situation is worse than it was 12 days ago. It’s entrenched in the capitals. Seventy percent of the [infected] people are definitely dying from this disease and it is accelerating in almost all settings,” said Bruce Aylward, assistant director general of the World Health Organization.

Aylward offered three numbers: 70, 70 and 60. To control Ebola, 70 percent of Ebola-victim burials must be conducted safely, 70 percent of those infected must be in treatment, and within 60 days.

“The virus is moving on virus time; we’re moving on bureaucracy or program time,” commented Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “The virus is actually picking up the pace. Even as we add resources, we get farther behind.”

Ebola cases are doubling every three weeks in West Africa, and global health officials are watching closely the “reproduction number” of the virus. This number estimates the number of people, on average, who will contract the virus from each person already stricken. The current number is estimated to be 1.5 to two. In order for the epidemic to decline, the number must be below one.

“The speed at which things are moving on the ground, it’s hard for people to get their minds around. People don’t understand the concept of exponential growth,” said Frieden. “Exponential growth in the context of three weeks means, ‘If I know that X needs to be done, and I work my butt off and get it done in three weeks, it’s now half as good as it needs to be.'”

“Maybe we can bring [the reproduction number] from two to 1.2 or 1.3, which would indicate that the number of new cases will be dramatically reduced, and that will give you time,” commented Gerardo Chowell, a mathematical epidemiologist at Arizona State University, who worked on the current reproduction number estimate. “Even modest gains in lowering the number could give health officials and the military a better chance of controlling the epidemic,” considered Chowell.

To date, over 4,000 people have died in West Africa out of 8,000 reported cases. The current assumption regarding the numbers is that they are significantly underreported, and that for every four known cases, six more go unreported.

By Andrew Stern

Men and Women Judge Art Differently, According to New Study

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Men and Women Judge Art Differently, According to New Study
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Whose art is worth more? The ordinary painter who just took up the craft or the authentic artist who has spent 20 years working at it and believes he will paint until he dies? According to a new joint marketing study, women and men judge the value of art differently, and how an artist is presented could have a significant effect on how much of the $65bn worldwide art market he or she will claim.

The research looked at the responses of 518 subjects–male and female–to two unfamiliar paintings which were each accompanied by a fabricated artist biography. Some participants read a biography that described the artist as an ordinary painter who only recently took up art. Other participants read a biography that described a much more authentic painter.

Men and Women Judge Art Differently (2)
Stephanie Mangus

“The more authentic artist was described as having been painting for over 20 years and believes they will paint ‘until he dies,'” Stephanie Mangus, assistant professor in MSU’s Broad College of Business and an author of the report, told The Speaker.

Both male and female subjects were found to be more willing to buy the more authentic artist’s work and to pay a higher price for that work.

However, males were much more likely to base their decisions on the artist’s “brand” than females, according to the research.

Women were more likely to “go through a complicated process of actually evaluating the artwork,” the researchers found.

“Regarding the complicated process,” Mangus explained to us, “women rely more heavily on the attitude they form toward the art itself, even if they are not an art expert, when determining their behavioral intentions toward the art (purchase and purchase price). Women rely more strongly than men on their own judgments of the actual piece of artwork. Men, in contrast, place more emphasis on the attitude they develop toward the artist when making these same downstream decisions related to purchase and price.”

The research has several implications, for both business and the everyday art viewer, Mangus told us.

“On the management/business side, we would like the folks that manage artists and other creative sorts (and even brands) to understand that authenticity is important to consumers. Consistency between an artist’s authentic ‘story’ and the image/brand they present to the outside world factors into how consumers judge them and their work. Ultimately, whether or not artists make any money off of consumers is partially a function of their authenticity and ability to convey it.

“On the consumer side, it’s a nice note to the non-connoisseur that they can still make evaluations of art and not shy away from making these types of decisions.”

The findings may extend to other creator-based product industries as well, such as clothing, shoe, jewelry and restaurant and food industries.

“While designers and chefs oftentimes operate in the background, this research suggests that more emphatically communicating their passion and commitment to their craft could significantly benefit that brand’s image and sales,” the team found.

The report may also help to fill in the dearth of consumer research relating to the steadily growing art market, according to Mangus, which has outperformed the equities market during the past 10 years of growth.

“For the average person trying to purchase art, knowing something about the artist–and knowing that the artist is authentic–can reduce the risk of buying a worthless piece,” Mangus stated. “All consumers in the study, but especially men, evaluated art with a strong emphasis on how motivated and passionate the artist was. So if you’re an artist or if you’re managing an artist, developing that human brand–getting the message across that you’re authentic–becomes essential.”

The report was authored by Julie Guidry Moulard from Louisiana Tech University, Dan Hamilton Rice from Louisiana State University and Carolyn Popp Garrity from Birmingham-Southern College, in addition to Mangus, and was published in Psychology & Marketing.

By Joseph Reight

Spread of Ebola Across Europe “Inevitable” – WHO Chief

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Spread of Ebola Across Europe Inevitable - WHO Chief
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[BRIEF] According to the World Health Organization, the spread of Ebola across Europe is “quite unavoidable.”

WHO European Director Zsuzsanna Jakab commented Tuesday on the recent first case of Ebola contracted in Europe and said, “Such imported cases and similar events as have happened in Spain will happen also in the future, most likely.”

“It is quite unavoidable … that such incidents will happen in the future because of the extensive travel both from Europe to the affected countries and the other way around.”

Read more: First Ebola Case in Europe

Jakab warned that more cases will spread across Europe and that the continent should be well prepared to control the disease.

At the top of the list of those at risk for infection are health workers, according to Jakab, who added, “The most important thing in our view is that Europe is still at low risk and that the western part of the European region particularly is the best prepared in the world to respond to viral haemorrhagic fevers including Ebola.”

After Death Consciousness Suggested by Largest Near-Death Experience Study

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After Death Consciousness Suggested by Largest Near-Death Experience StudyAfter Death Consciousness Suggested by Largest Near-Death Experience Study
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According to the largest study ever conducted treating near-death experiences, evidence suggests that there is consciousness after clinical death.

A University of Southampton team spent four years examining 2,060 cardiac arrest patients at 15 different hospitals on three continents.

The report, “AWAREness during CPR: Be careful with what you say!” was authored by Drs Edgardo Olvera-Lopez and Joseph Varon, and was published in Resuscitation magazine.

Overall, the team found that 40 percent of people who survived cardiac arrest–140 of 330 people–described some kind of awareness during the time they were clinically dead.

The kinds of experiences reported by the survivors included an unusual sense of peacefulness and alterations in time perception. Some said time slowed down while other said it speeded up.

Some survivors reported seeing a bright light. Some described it as a golden flash or like the Sun shining.

Others, however, reported feelings of fear, of drowning or being pulled down through deep water.

Of the survivors, 13 percent reported experiences commonly referred to as out-of-body. Another 13 percent reported that their senses had been heightened.

“We know the brain can’t function when the heart has stopped beating,” said Dr Sam Parnia, a former research fellow at Southampton University, now at the State University of New York. However, Parnia went on to describe specific instances of patients who reported things that suggested that after death consciousness was possible, including accounts of out-of-body like experiences.

Dr Jerry Nolan, Editor-in-Chief at Resuscitation said: “Dr Parnia and his colleagues are to be congratulated on the completion of a fascinating study that will open the door to more extensive research into what happens when we die.”

By Cheryl Bretton

Recession Means Many Women Will Never Have a Child – Study

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Recession Means Many Women Will Never Have a Child - Study
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Most studies have concluded that unemployment in the short run leads to a drop in fertility, but whether the negative effects persist–whether women simply postpone childbearing or if the effect is more long-term–has remained unknown. According to a recent study by Princeton University, living through a recession means that some women will never have a child, and a major recession such as that experienced in the US in 2008-2009 may cause losses of hundreds of thousands of births.

“Fertility falls when unemployment rises, but there may be no long-run effect if women simply postpone childbearing,” considered the authors of the study, but after completing their research the team concluded that unemployment not only causes drops in fertility in the short-term, but over time the negative effects actually increase. This increase was found to be characterized largely by women who did not have any children as a result of living through a recession in their early 20s.

Photo credit: Eileen Barroso
Dr Janet Currie

“The effects are actually bigger in the long run than in the short run,” Dr. Janet Currie, Henry Putnam, Professor of Economics and Public Affairs Director of the Center for Health and Well-Being at Princeton, told The Speaker.

“Macroeconomic events really matter for individual people’s lives, and can have a profound effect on them,” said Currie.

She commented on those women who were most vulnerable to fluctuations in employment rates. “What matters is unemployment in the early 20s. So a deeper recession at that time of a woman’s life would lead to fewer births long-term.”

The report, “Short- and long-term effects of unemployment on fertility,” was authored by Curie and Dr Hannes Schwandt at Princeton University, and was published in the current edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team analyzed the effect of unemployment by following fixed groups of US-born women. The team looked at year of birth and state in which the women lived, and drew on 140 million US birth records for the period 1975-2010.

They found that only a one percent decrease in the employment rate during a woman’s life from between the ages of 20-24 caused a drop in short-term fertility by six conceptions per 1,000 women.

When those women were assessed at their 40th year, that same one percent drop during their early 20s was associated with an overall drop in conceptions of 14.2 per 1,000 women.

Taking this finding to the national level, the effects of a major recession can account for hundreds of thousands of lost births.

“On a national scale effects of the magnitude we find suggest a loss of about 400,000 births stemming from the ‘Great Recession’ that started in 2008,” Currie told us.

“This larger long-term effect is driven largely by women who remain childless.”

By Day Blakely Donaldson

Suicide and Depression Linked to Pesticides

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Suicide and Depression Linked to Pesticides
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According to a recent study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, pesticide use is positively linked to suicide and depression. The study analyzed data from various pesticide classes and found evidence supported a positive association between pesticide exposure and depression. Several specific pesticides were also positively identified as associated.

“Few previous studies have considered the episodic nature of depression or examined individual pesticides,” wrote the researchers of their findings, “We evaluated associations between pesticide exposure and depression among male private pesticide applicators in the Agricultural Health Study.”

The team based their findings on reports competed by those exposed to pesticides over the past 20 years.

“We analyzed data for 10 pesticide classes and 50 specific pesticides used by 21,208 applicators enrolled in 1993–1997 who completed a follow-up telephone interview in 2005–2010,” wrote the team in a summary of their work.

The team calculated the amount of applicators who reported a physician diagnosis of depression and those who had previous diagnoses of depression.

The team concluded that their study “supports a positive association between pesticide exposure and depression, including associations with several specific pesticides.”

Several specific pesticides were directly linked to depression.

“[T]he fumigants aluminum phosphide and ethylene dibromide; the phenoxy herbicide (2,4,5-trichlorophenoxy) acetic acid (2,4,5-T); the organochlorine insecticide dieldrin; and the organophosphate insecticides diazinon, malathion, and parathion—were all positively associated with depression in each case group.”

The study, “Pesticide Exposure and Depression among Male Private Pesticide Applicators in the Agricultural Health Study,” was authored by John D. Beard, David M. Umbach, Jane A. Hoppin, Marie Richards, Michael C.R. Alavanja, Aaron Blair, Dale P. Sandler, and Freya Kamel, and was published in Environmental Health Perspectives.

By Sid Douglas

First Ebola Case in Europe

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A nurse who had served on the team that treated a Spanish priest who contracted the disease in West Africa has become the first Ebola case in Europe. She is also the first person to have contracted the disease outside Africa, despite the highest level of precautions having been taken.

The nurse tested positive for Ebola in two tests.

The woman was part of the team that had treated priest Manuel Garcia Viejo, a Spaniard who died Sept. 25 in a Spanish hospital after contracting the disease in Liberia.

The nurse began to feel ill last week while on holiday, and was admitted to a hospital near Madrid on Monday morning with high fever, according to Health Minister Ana Mato.

No information has been reported regarding those who would have been exposed to the woman during her illness.

The nurse is being held in quarantine in Spain, and is reported to be in stable condition.

The disease, which is spreading rapidly–with cases doubling every three weeks in West Africa–has killed 3,400 of at least 7,500 confirmed cases of infection–although the actual number is suspected to be much higher. Currently, over one hundred people are dying within 24 hour periods.

Ebola spreads through contact with any bodily fluids of an infected person. The only means of stopping the spread of the disease is isolation, according to authorities.

Despite numerous calls by politicians and experts for travel restrictions, the US and other nations have rejected any travel restrictions to the affected areas.

Read more: US Experts Warn US Not Prepared to Contain Ebola, US Officials Reject Travel Restrictions

By Cheryl Bretton

 

Short Weight Lifting Sessions Boost Memory [video]

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Short Weight Lifting Sessions Boost Memory, Research Finds
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According to a new study led by the Georgia Institute of Technology, just one short burst of weight-lifting can enhance long-term memory for young adults by around 10 percent.

“Our study indicates that people don’t have to dedicate large amounts of time to give their brain a boost,” said Lisa Weinberg, a graduate student and the Georgie Institute of Technology and leader of the research.

The report, “A single bout of resistance exercise can enhance episodic memory performance,” was published in the journal Acta Psychologica.

Previous research had already established that exercise could improve memory, but much subsequent research had focused on regular sessions of aerobic exercise, such as running.

Th Georgia Institute research looked instead at the effect of just one weight-lifting session conducted two days before a memory test.

The test subjects were asked to monitor a series of 90 random photographs–but not memorize them–and afterwards work out on a leg resistance machine.

Half of the subjects did leg exercises–50 leg presses at their maximum ability–and half of the subjects did no exercise.

Two days later, when participants were again shown the series of images along with 90 new images, the leg press group was able to remember the first set of photos at a 60 percent rate, while the group that did no exercise recalled the first images at a 50 percent rate.

The research based its approach on recent studies on animals that had suggested physical stress after learning can strengthen memory formation.

“Even without doing expensive fMRI scans, our results give us an idea of what areas of the brain might be supporting these exercise-induced memory benefits,” said Audrey Duarte, a researcher involved in the study. “The findings are encouraging because they are consistent with rodent literature that pinpoints exactly the parts of the brain that play a role in stress-induced memory benefits caused by exercise.”

By Cheryl Bretton

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikartHi08XU”][su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ctbc9kw1oHA”][/su_youtube]

US Experts Warn US Not Prepared to Contain Ebola, US Officials Reject Travel Restrictions

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US Experts Warn US Not Prepared to Contain Ebola, US Officials Reject Travel Restrictions
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While experts in the US warned that the US was not prepared to contain an Ebola outbreak, citing mistakes and missteps in the handling of the first US Ebola case which resulted in the death of Thomas Duncan last week, US officials and US President Barack Obama rejected increasing calls for travel restrictions to and from the affected areas of West Africa.

“It is America–our doctors, our scientists, our know-how–that leads the fight to contain and combat the Ebola epidemic in West Africa,” said Obama in rejecting travel restrictions, stressing his faith in US doctors and health facilities.

CDC Director Tom Friedman also dismissed calls for travel restrictions and isolation of the West African nations where the Ebola outbreak has claimed thousands of lives.

Friedman rationalized his position by saying that isolating the outbreak regions may cause the disease to spread more widely and cause greater risk to America.

“It’s a tough question that’s coming up and will keep coming up,” Friedman said. “Our perspective–very much like the situation with regard to the individual–is to take actions that seem like they may work. The approach of isolating countries–it’s harder to get help into that country and it may enable the disease to spread more widely there and potentially become more of a risk to us here.”

However, Friedman admitted that the risk was not controlled.

“The bottom line here is the plain truth that we can’t make the risk zero until the outbreak is controlled in West Africa,” said Friedman.

Several US politicians have made public calls for travel restrictions.

Rep. Ted Poe (R-Humble) requested that the president restrict travel to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

“I believe that the recent Ebola case in Dallas highlights the fact that non-essential travel to the affected region is putting Americans at unnecessary risk,” Poe wrote in his request.

Texas US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sent a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration questioning the measures it was taking to protect America from Ebola.

“Due to the Obama administration’s unclear approach to addressing the threat of the Ebola virus, Americans–particularly the Texans who have possibly been exposed–deserve specific answers to how the administration is addressing travel to and from the countries impacted by the disease,” Cruz wrote.

US Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Upper St. Clair) also warned of a need to increase health security. “The propensity of people coming out of those countries may be to get out of there as fast as possible,” said Murphy. “Even if that means lying on their records. We can’t necessarily just use that verbal screening process. CDC and NIH are going to tell us how they are adapting and changing this, because the current process apparently is not effective.”

Experts in the US have also called for restrictions.

Gavin MacGregor-Skinner, an assistant professor of public health at Penn State University, who helped set up an Ebola clinic in Nigeria weeks ago, said of the outbreak, “This is a Category 5 hurricane. It just happens to be viral.”

Phenelle Segal, president of Montgomery County-based Infection Control Consulting Services and a former infection prevention analyst for the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority, warned, “Unless the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention take extreme measures to prevent the universal spread of the disease, we could possibly end up with a pandemic.

“I think as soon as we started seeing West Africa go out of control with Ebola, that was the time [to impose travel restrictions.]”

In West Africa, the disease has claimed 3,300 lives with no end in sight. The UN has said of the outbreak that it is surging “beyond control,” and warned of a worldwide disaster.

Ebola cases in West Africa have doubled every three weeks. In Sierra Leone 121 people died of Ebola Sunday.

UN officials have stated that a total air quarantine would not stop the spread of Ebola, but would delay it.

By Day Blakely Donaldson

Public Votes Pluto Is a Planet at Harvard-Smithsonian Meeting

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International Astronomical Union Meets to Define Planets, Votes Pluto Should Be a Planet Again
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The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics held a meeting last week to discuss the definition of what a planet is, and whether Pluto–which had its planet status removed in 2006 after a vote by the International Astronomical Union (IAU)–should be considered a planet. Three experts paneled the meeting, and each argued for or against Pluto as a planet. The audience then voted.

Pluto has not been considered a planet since 2006, when the IAU met for the same purpose.

In 2005, the discovery of an object, later called Eris, which was farther out than Pluto, and which was larger and more massy than Pluto, disrupted the nine-planet concept of the Solar System. Astronomers met to make a final decision on the definition of a planet at the 26th General Assembly of the IAU in the summer of 2006.

At the 2006 meeting, astronomers voted on the definition of a planet and the status of Pluto. They had three options: maintain the traditional nine-planet Solar System, add three planets of similar size to Pluto–including Eris and Ceres–or remove Pluto and adopt an eight-planet Solar System.

Controversially, they voted for an eight-planet system. Pluto and Eris became “dwarf planets.”

The IAU decided three criteria needed to be met to be considered a planet: the object must orbit the sun, it must have sufficient gravity to pull itself into spherical shape, and it must have “cleared the neighborhood” of its orbit. Pluto had not achieved the last of these criteria.

Today, many astronomers and the public are still uncertain about what exactly defines a planet, but the meeting last week reconsidered the definition, and Pluto.

Three experts presented their case, and the audience voted on the status of Pluto.

One expert, Gareth Williams, associate director at the IAU Minor Planet Center, who was opposed to making Pluto a planet, argued, “Jupiter has cleared its neighborhood. Earth has cleared its neighborhood. Ceres, which is in the main asteroid belt, hasn’t. Pluto hasn’t. In my world, Pluto is not a planet.”

However, the two other experts thought Pluto should be a planet. Historian Owen Gingerich thought that the concept of “planet” is one that is culturally defined and changes over time, and Dimitar Sasselov, director of Harvard’s planetary program, thought that a planet was the smallest spherical lump of matter formed around stars or stellar remnants, so Pluto qualified as a planet.

The audience voted, and found in favor of Pluto being counted a planet.

By Joseph Reight

The Full Debate About Planets and Pluto:

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RNGSuFqmro”]

More information: Universe Today

IBM Develops New Brainlike Chip, 180,000x More Efficient Than Modern CPUs

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IBM Develops New Brainlike Chip 2
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The new chip developed by IBM has 4096 cores, 1 million programmable neurons, and 5.4 billion transistors, heralding what some are calling a new era in computing.

The chip, called TrueNorth, is the most advanced neuromorphic (brain-like) chip created, and is incredibly efficient.

The chip consumes only 72 milliwatts at maximum load–equivalent to 400 billion synaptic operations per second per watt. The chip is therefore around 180,000 times more efficient than a modern CPU, and almost 800 times more efficient than other cutting-edge neuromorphic approaches.

IBM Develops New Brainlike Chip 2

Spokespeople for IBM commented on the TrueNorth chip, “One of the key problems with developing a new chip based on a novel architecture is that you also have to create developer tools and software that actually make efficient use of those thousands of cores and billions of synapses. Fortunately, IBM’s already got that covered: Last year it released a specialized programming language (Corelet) and simulator (Compass) that let you program and test your neuromorphic programs before running them on actual hardware.”

“Ultimately, the main purpose of the SyNAPSE project is to take existing systems that simulate the functionality of the brain in software — such as deep neural networks — and run them on hardware that was specifically designed for the task. As you may already know, dedicated hardware tends to orders of magnitude more efficient than simulating/emulating the hardware in software on a general-purpose CPU. This is why IBM is touting some utterly incredible efficiency figures for TrueNorth. For neural networks with high spike rates and a large number of active synapses, TrueNorth can deliver 400 billion synaptic operations per second (SOPS) per watt. When running the exact same neural network, a general-purpose CPU is 176,000 times less energy efficient, while a state-of-the-art multiprocessor neuromorphic system (48 chips, each with 18 cores) is 769 times less efficient. While it’s not directly comparable, the world’s most efficient supercomputer only manages around 4.5 billion FLOPS per watt.

IBM Develops New Brainlike Chip 2

“I don’t think IBM is actually getting back into the consumer electronics market (though that would be amusing). Rather, this is just a concept of the kind of thing the TrueNorth chip might one day enable.”

A technical reserach paper was published in Science today, titled “A million spiking-neuron integrated circuit with a scalable communication network and interface.”

By Andy Stern