Bird Flu: Communicating the Risk, Sandman & Lanard

Bird Flu: Communicating the Risk by Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard
2005 Perspectives in Health (Panamerican Health Organization), vol 10, No. 2, retrieved 18 March 2006.

Many experts believe that avian influenza is a time bomb for human health. But how to deal with the many uncertainties surrounding the issue? Two leading risk communication experts give their best advice on sounding the alarm about what might be the next great flu pandemic—or not.

2006 AK Bird Study Map

This is the map showing study protocol locations in Alaska, discussed previously here

Where is Y-K resources

http://maps.grida.no/go/collection/
collectionid/415C76C8-85AD-4135-B0D4-A0D5FA0C557D

“A UNEP/GRID-Arendal publication”

http://www.vitalgraphics.net/arctic.cfm

http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/ major_global_bird_migration_routes_to_the_arctic

http://map.uarctic.org/
Interactive map with an overview of the institutions in the University of the Arctic network, and the Arctic environment.

Arctic Environmental Atlas
http://maps.grida.no/arctic/
Arctic Environmental Atlas This interactive map service for the Arctic region presents a variety of environmental themes on issues from conservation to climate change and biodiversity.

“Projected changes in the Arctic climate, 2090
The averages of the scenarios in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) are presented in this figure, for the year 2090, with the surface temperatures over land, the size of the polar ice cap, and the outer limits of permafrost.”
http://maps.grida.no/ go/graphic/projected_changes_in_the_arctic_climate_2090

Why cover sneezes?

This classic sneeze comes from slide collection, Department of Medical Microbiology, Edinburgh University

“Airborne microorganisms

Airborne particles are a major cause of respiratory ailments of humans, causing allergies, asthma, and pathogenic infections of the respiratory tract. Airborne fungal spores are also important agents of plant disease, and the means for dissemination of many common saprotrophic (saprophytic) fungi.

Here we consider:

* some important respiratory diseases of humans
* the roles of airborne spores in crop diseases
* the methods used to monitor spore populations in the air”

http://helios.bto.ed.ac.uk/bto/microbes/ airborne.htm#crest

also from
WELCOME TO FUNGAL BIOLOGY
This website provides learning and self-assessment resources, and many colour images to supplement the information in the book, FUNGAL BIOLOGY,
A Textbook by JIM DEACON, Blackwell Publishing 2005″

http://helios.bto.ed.ac.uk/bto/FungalBiology/ index.htm

[revised 2008-10-29] There are related images and posts at

• Do it in your sleeve
• another sneeze video

and now, the cough–

Cough by schlieren photography Gary Settles/Pennsylvania State University

The Mysterious Cough, Caught on Film By DENISE GRADY Published: October 27, 2008 In Roald Dahl’s novel “The B.F.G.,” the title character, a big friendly giant, captures dreams in glass jars. At Pennsylvania State University, a professor of engineering has captured something less whimsical but no less ephemeral — a cough — on film. The image, published online Oct. 9 by The New England Journal of Medicine, was created by schlieren photography, which “takes an invisible phenomenon and turns it into a visible picture,” said the engineering professor, Gary Settles, who is the director of the university’s gas dynamics laboratory.

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Site Search Tags: germs, sneeze, cough, fomites, NYTimes, NEJM

Getting Sick Stinks!

Getting Sick Stinks!
Sanitation placard about honeybuckets, hauling water and hand washing.

Instructional Activities for Community Sanitation
A Teacher’s Resource Guide: The manual contains 29 individual activities, intended for high school level students, emphasizing village sanitation; water, wastewater, solid waste and personal hygiene issues.

University of Alaska Sitka

What children do (water forum)

from the March 22, 2006 edition
As experts ponder world water crisis, teenagers show creativity
By Monica Campbell | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

MEXICO CITY – As water experts meet in Mexico City to debate the world’s daunting water crisis, 15-year-old Dolly Akhter is here to share her simple approach.

She and 6,000 other girls canvass the slums of Dhaka, going door to door in the Bangladeshi capital to tout good hygiene. “We talk to families and especially the teenage girls about the importance of washing their hands,” explains Dolly.

She is among 100 or so children from more than 30 countries participating in the Children’s Water Forum held parallel to the 4th World Water Forum. While the adults argue over ideological differences, the youngsters showcase the grass-roots action that reaches those hardest hit by the lack of safe water and basic sanitation:

• Suresh Baral, 13, leads a club in rural Nepal that helps communities pay for toilets through microfinancing; Suresh’s toilet-financing project in Nepal, started with advice from UNICEF, is already producing results: Two-thirds of homes in his village of Pumbi Bhumbi now have toilets, he says. “Bit by bit, we’re managing to bring change,” he affirms.

• 9th-grader Happy Sisomphone directs a radio segment on sanitation, hygiene, and water-borne diseases. “In school we’re reminded that it’s important to wash your hands after playing with dirt,” says Happy, trained by UNICEF as a volunteer radio producer. “But we never learn why. So I interview people about the reasons we should be careful.”

Timeline of Human Flu Pandemics

Focus on the Flu

Timeline of Human Flu Pandemics

timeline 1918-present

Influenza vaccine: Could good enough be better than perfect?

[14apr2006, The Why Files are another excellent source of science explanation, from the University of Wisconsin. Pam]
http://whyfiles.org/231flu_vaccine/

The bird flu has killed millions of birds and more than 60 people in Asia. So far, the virus does not seem to infect one person directly from another. …

Three strategies have been discussed to fight an avian influenza once it starts to spread between people: Drugs, quarantine, and vaccines.

Each strategy has major pitfalls….

There are 4 pages in this feature plus a bibliography and a credits page. Megan Anderson, project assistant; Terry Devitt, editor; S.V. Medaris, designer/illustrator; David Tenenbaum, feature writer; Amy Toburen, content development executive

See also…
Bird Flu: Spreading Fast. What’s Next?

©2006, University of Wisconsin, Board of Regents. Last modified: December 01, 2005 15:38:40 PM

This first article has a good graphic about immunity and the evolutionary changes needed for a bird infection to become a human infection.
http://whyfiles.org/ 231flu_vaccine/images/antigenetic_shift.jpg

Flu virus can undergo antigenic drift, the small change that explains why last year’s flu vaccine doesn’t work so well this year. Or it can go through antigenic shift, a major change in virus subtype that makes the virus look new to the immune system. After antigenic shift, the virus gets new H and N numbers: H stands for hemagglutinin, and N for neuraminidase; both are surface proteins that can be attacked by the immune system. Hemagglutinin comes in 16 flavors, and neuraminidase in nine.

H1N1 caused the 1918 epidemic; H3N2 caused the 1968 epidemic, and H5N1 is the bird flu that’s causing a globeful of fretting this year. H1N1 and H3N2 remain widespread, but because most people have gained some immunity after infection by these subtypes, the common flu is seldom deadly.

Learn more from The Why Files, an all-round great site from the University of Wisconsin for teachers of science, math, and engineering. The second article explains some of the “CSI” aspects of forensic epidemiology.

“Preventative drugs: Target or blanket? “http://whyfiles.org/230birdflu2/index.php?g=2.txt

How does influenza spread?

Alaska State Pandemic Portal

Health & Social Services > Public Health > Preparedness Program > Pandemic Influenza

Pandemic Influenza Information
http://www.pandemicflu.alaska.gov/

Influenza Virus Resource (GenBank)

Need to know which hemagglutinin proteins were carried last year by influenza viruses in Asia? Users can dissect viral proteins and nucleotide sequences from all over the world and from a variety of hosts, inlcuding humans, opigs, anbd birds.

Virus sequences are gathered here at the US National Center for Biotechnology Information.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ genomes/FLU/FLU.html

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reference from www.sciencemag.org/netwatch