You may have heard about avian flu, and how migratory birds may be spreading the virus around and potentially allowing for new strains to emerge, but you may not have heard about birds carrying disease causing protozoans.
In this peer-reviewed journal article published by EcoHealth, researchers are able to connect the migration of birds through Europe to the emergence of Trichomonosis in several places, such as southern Fennoscandia. This will be the first time it has been documented that birds are transporting a protozoal disease across regions through migratory patterns!
Read more about it at the EcoHealth Alliance website or at BBC or the Independent.
EcoHealthNet is an awesome program for anyone who is interested in learning more skills to use in the infectious disease research field, or to get involved with some super interesting projects around the work. I was lucky enough to become involved with planning for this program through work, and I also got to participate in our workshop in June (which was held at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, MD)!

This is the group that was at the workshop, including student participants from the Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Ethiopia, Peru, Spain, USA, Vietnam, as well as lecturers from Johns Hopkins, Harvard, University of Wisconsin, and EcoHealth Alliance (where I work!).
So what does infectious disease research mean? This is a cutting-edge field that brings together ecologists, veterinarians, geographers, medical professionals, policy makers, and more. Participants at the workshop learned about disease mapping/spatial analysis and mathematical disease modeling, and people who went on the research exchange contributed to projects like Nipah virus surveillance in Bangladesh to developing primers for avian influenza viruses in China to wildlife surveillance in Brazil to White Nose Syndrome in the United States
The next opportunity to apply for EcoHealthNet 2012 will be this fall. Applications will be accepted starting in October 2011! Check out the website here: http:// www.ecohealthalliance.org/health/29-ecohealthnet
Have you ever wished that you could glow in the dark? If you have, attempting to imitate marine species by acquiring bioluminescent bacteria is not the way to do it.
A journal article published in Emerging Infectious Diseases details 2 cases of Australians who had soft tissue infections from the Photorhabdus species.
There have been a total of 12 human cases of infection, but there is no clear understanding of how these people got the bacteria, with the only clue being that they somehow got it while taking part in some outdoor activity. It is likely that they got the bacteria from a terrestrial invertebrate (a nematode or arthropod).
The 17th International Sustainable Development Research Conference is being held at Columbia University on May 8-10, 2011.
The main topic of the conference is “Moving Toward a Sustainable Future: Opportunities and Challenges,” and one of the things I’m interested in seeing is if there are any researchers who will present work that is based more in biology than you would typically expect at a sustainable development conference.
I’m submitting an abstract soon for this conference, and I hope that it gets accepted because it would be great to bring a different perspective to this discussion. As of today, they have received 330 abstract submissions! I hope to present an analysis that will really open up new possibilities for future research!
Check out the website for more info on topics covered in the conference. They include:
- pressures on earth’s natural and socioeconomic systems,
- limits for future development,
- solutions to problems created by development,
- adequacy of governing structures to implement policy,
- and assessment of pilot programs.
In an interesting contrast of perspectives on governments’ takes on environmental issues, these two videos highlight air pollution in Hong Kong and electronic waste in Toronto.
The first is a comedic public service announcement (PSA) put out by the Clean Air Network (CAN), which is a nonprofit advocating for more action to control air pollution in Hong Kong. I first saw this as part of an entry at the Green blog at New York Times that I saw yesterday.
Basically, air quality is a big mess because of industrial activity and roadside pollution. Instead of the usual “shockvertising” and serious ad campaigns, CAN decided to change their approach with this light, but poignant piece. Check it out:
For the Cantonese version, click here. The wording in this version is a little bit different, but the ideas are the same. (Interestingly, instead of the horse scent, there is man’s scent. Probably geared towards the fans of the main actor, Daniel Wu, because that is him in the image, I believe. I wonder why they chose to make it a horse scent and not anything else.)
The second is also an entertaining PSA but this time put out by a government agency. The City of Toronto wants your electronics, and they make it quite clear here:
I also saw this yesterday, at the blog Green as a Thistle. This video is quite funny, almost to the point where you don’t believe the City are the ones who actually released it. It is more in the style of a cheesy mattress commercial.
It seemed like a strange twist of fate that I came across these two videos on the same day, each with its own purpose in a common mission to incite environmental action, but coming from different perspectives. As I see it, there is one government attempting to stimulate action, and one government needing to be stimulated into action. It really gives you something to think about!
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