Lifeboat Foundation

From cattle to uncontrolled wildlife, pesky but pervasive large parasites like tapeworms have a far greater impact on the total body health of their mammal hosts than previously known, new University of Alberta research suggests.

“Parasites don’t have to kill the animal to control a population,” says Kyle Shanebeck, a Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Science’s Department of Biological Sciences who led the study.

Shanebeck explained that all wildlife have at least one and often multiple parasites. The less fatal a parasite, the more prevalent it is within a population, with potentially stronger negative effects.

A U.S. House Intelligence Committee member cautioned that bioweapons using a target’s DNA to kill only that individual are being created. US Representative Jason Crow of Colorado spoke on Friday at the Aspen Security Forum and cautioned Americans not to be too careless about sharing their DNA with private firms due to the impending arrival of the new type of weapon. “You can target a biological weapon that will kill that person or take them off the battlefield or make them inoperable,” Crow said. “You can take someone’s DNA, you know, take their medical profile,” he added.

Given the prevalence of DNA testing services, where customers voluntarily share their genetic mapping with companies to learn more about their ancestry and health, the congressman said it is concerning that these weapons are being developed. Although 23andMe has maintained time and time again that it does not sell its customers’ private information, it is one of many DNA companies that have done so when asked by the police.

As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, US Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa claimed that the US’s adversaries may deploy such DNA bioweapons to attack food supply on a large scale. Ernst forewarned that specific animals relied upon by civilians, armies, or towns could be the target of biological weapons, resulting in scarcity and food poverty and weakening populations.

Designed for precision agriculture and environmental management use cases, the P4 Multispectral drone combines data from six separate sensors to measure the health of crops. It can be used to monitor everything from individual plants to entire fields, as well as weeds, insects, and a variety of soil conditions.

The P4 Multispectral drone is compatible with standard industry workflows including flight programming, mapping, and analytics software from DJI and other leading providers. Using the DJI GS Pro application, you can create automated and repeatable missions including flight planning, mission execution, and flight data management. Data collected can be easily imported into DJI Terra or a suite of third-party software including Pix4D Mapper and DroneDeploy, for analysis and to generate additional vegetation index maps.

Continue reading “DJI releases new firmware update for Phantom 4 Multispectral drone” »

Tedros said the risk posed by monkeypox is moderate globally, but the threat is high in Europe. There’s clearly a risk that the virus will continue to spread around the world, he said, though it’s unlikely to disrupt global trade or travel right now.

In early May, the United Kingdom reported a case of monkeypox in a person who recently returned from travel to Nigeria. Several days later, the U.K. reported three more cases of monkeypox in people who appeared to have become infected locally. Other European nations, Canada and the U.S. then also began confirming cases. It’s unclear where the outbreak actually began.

The WHO last issued a global health emergency in January 2020 in response to the Covid-19 outbreak and two months later declared it a pandemic. The WHO has no official process to declare a pandemic under its organizational laws, which means the term is loosely defined. In 2020, the agency declared Covid a pandemic in an effort to warn complacent governments about the “alarming levels of spread and severity” of the virus.

LONDON (AP) — The chief of the World Health Organization said the expanding monkeypox outbreak in more than 70 countries is an “extraordinary” situation that now qualifies as a global emergency, a declaration Saturday that could spur further investment in treating the once-rare disease and worsen the scramble for scarce vaccines.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the decision to issue the declaration despite a lack of consensus among experts serving on the U.N. health agency’s emergency committee. It was the first time the chief of the U.N. health agency has taken such an action.

“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission about which we understand too little and which meets the criteria in the international health regulations,” Tedros said.

Paxlovid is the leading oral medication for preventing severe cases of COVID-19 in high-risk individuals. However, symptoms returned in some patients after treatment was completed, prompting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to issue a health advisory on this so-called “COVID-19 rebound.”

In a study published June 20, 2022 in Clinical Infectious Diseases, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine evaluated one such patient and found their symptom relapse was not caused by the development of resistance to the drug or impaired immunity against the virus. Rather, the COVID-19 rebound appears to have been the result of insufficient exposure to the drug.

July 20 (Reuters) — The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed 14,000 cases of monkeypox worldwide, with five deaths reported in Africa, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.

Most of the cases reported thus far have been found in Europe, particularly among men who have sex with men, the WHO said, although all the deaths have occurred in Africa, the region where monkeypox outbreaks have historically been found.

On Thursday, the WHO will convene the second meeting of a committee that will decide whether the outbreak is a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), its highest level of alert.

Peanut Allergies – Why They Are a Thing and What to do About Them.

Research from Australia produces remission in peanut allergy through targeting Th2 cells to create antibodies to turn off the immune response.