H5N1 Discovered at Texas Egg Facility
Cal-Main Foods reported that H5N1 was discovered at its Texas egg facility in Parmer County, Texas. 1.6 million hens and 337,000 pullets were culled as a result.Read more on sciencespacerobots.com (Source: HealthNewsBlog.com)
Source: HealthNewsBlog.com - April 2, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: h5n1 hpai Source Type: blogs
Upgrading your photographic workflow
Back in February, DxO sent me a beta version of their PureRaw4 software to test drive ahead of the official launch in March. So, having used version 3 for years, I was keen to incorporate the upgrade into my workflow. I’ve pushed it to the limit with a high-speed, low-light photo of a Mute Swan landing on a lake. This is the final result, below you can read how I got there from a very noisy RAW file straight out of the camera.
This is the final denoised and processed image – Mute Swan Landing
The bottom line is that PureRaw4 does an excellent job of basically knocking out noise to the equivalent of about three ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - March 26, 2024 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Photography Source Type: blogs
My natural highlights of 2023
A few natural highlights from another year of trying to get a perfect wildlife snap! You can find the photos I took of these highlights littered around the Sciencebase website, in my Imaging Storm galleries, on my Instagram and Mastodon.
We started the year on the North Norfolk coast as usual, with Pink-footed Geese etc at Wells, and Shorelarks, Snow Buntings, and a White-tailed Eagle at Holkham, and various other sightings of avian life elsewhere on our walks.
White-tailed Eagle
Soon after we got home there was an alert for a relative rarity and so I saw a couple of Smew at Meadowlane Pits, St Ives. Later that month, Mrs...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - December 31, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Birds Lepidoptera Source Type: blogs
Birders versus Toggers
Broadly speaking, birders are avian enthusiasts, people interesting in seeing birds. Sometimes birders are twitchers, they like to see a bird so they can “tick” that species off a list, often it involves travelling far from their patch to see a species new to them. Twitchers are often not birders, they’re more akin to collectors, but aren’t necessarily interested in the birds per se. Then there are people with cameras who are also birders, twitchers, or both. Birders and twitchers often refer to these birding photographers as toggers, it’s a rather derogatory word.
Now, if a bird of interest s...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - November 18, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Birds Photography Source Type: blogs
Moustached Reedlings – Bearded Tits
The Bearded Reedling, Panurus biarmicus, is the only known avian species in its genus. It was originally named the Bearded Tit because of its superficial resemblance to the Long-tailed Tit perhaps, but it is definitely not closely related to that bird nor any other tit.
Female Bearded Reedlings lack the “beard of the males
The odd thing though is that the “bearded” part of its name refers to the facial markings of the males. They have long, droopy-looking black patches either side of their bills, whimsically resembling male facial hair but perhaps sideburns or moustaches rather than a beard. I’ve no...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - October 30, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Birds Source Type: blogs
Some Like It Hot! A Century-Old Disease on Our Southern Shores
By MIKE MAGEE
Naomi Orestes PhD, Professor of the History of Science at Harvard, didn’t mince words as she placed our predicament in context when she said, “If you know your Greek tragedies you know power, hubris, and tragedy go hand in hand. If we don’t address the harmful aspects of human activities, most obviously disruptive climate change, we are headed for tragedy.”
At the time, as a member of the Anthropocene Workgroup, she and a group of international climate scientists were focused on defining and measuring nine “planetary boundaries,” environmental indicators of planetary health. At...
Source: The Health Care Blog - October 30, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Avian Flu Climate Change Pandemic Sea level change Yellow Fever Source Type: blogs
Audio birding
During the original covid lockdown, you might recall I mentioned an activity known as “noc migging“. Essentially, it’s birding at night with a microphone and a sound recording device. You record the sounds of birds passing overhead, many birds migrate at night, and then process the recording to pluck out the sounds of our feathered friends for identification.
Redwing
You can do the ID by ear or you can use software that analyses the sonogram and selects out the bird calls from the background noise of foxes and deer, motorbikes, cars, and other sounds of the night, and then passes it to ID software.
Brambl...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - October 27, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Birds Source Type: blogs
Answer to Case 725
Answer toParasite Case of the Week 725: Swimmer ' s itchAs noted by Florida Fan, this is " typical swimmer ’s itch, also known by other names depending on the activity of the patient like ' clam digger ’s itch ' or ' duck itch ' . " (Also called Pelican itch in Australia) " All are caused by [zoonotic] cercariae in most freshwater bodies of water frequented by ducks and/or water birds. The cercariae penetrate the skin and cause a cercarial dermatitis. This summer is so hot even in the Northern most states that a quick plunge into the lake is certainly very appealing. We may expect to see more cases like this one....
Source: Creepy Dreadful Wonderful Parasites - September 3, 2023 Category: Parasitology Source Type: blogs
Better Health Care Tests, Faster
This article looks at some specific problems and solutions.
Speeding up Test Development
We’ve seen with COVID-19 how quickly a virus can evolve and how hard it is to design both tests and vaccinations that accommodate different variants. Virax Biolabs uses data from the World Health Organization and others to develop tests quickly. For instance, new viral variants tend to spread in the southern hemisphere before hitting the northern hemisphere in our Winter, so Virax can check existing data to prepare better tests for the North.
The company is developing a T-cell diagnostics and profiling platform called Virax Immu...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - June 13, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andy Oram Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Interoperability CLIA COVID-19 Hydreight Immunexpress ixlayer Laboratories Labs Rolland Carlson Sepsis Sepsis Lab Tests Septicyte Shane Madden testing Tomasz George Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 29th 2023
In this study, we used a Drosophila model to understand the role of the dec2P384R mutation on animal health and elucidate the mechanisms driving these physiological changes. We found that the expression of the mammalian dec2P384R transgene in fly sleep neurons was sufficient to mimic the short sleep phenotype observed in mammals. Remarkably, dec2P384Rmutants lived significantly longer with improved health despite sleeping less. In particular, dec2P384R mutants were more stress resistant and displayed improved mitochondrial fitness in flight muscles. Differential gene expression analyses went on to reveal several altered tr...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 28, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Long Term Exercise Improves Neurogenesis and Memory Function in Mice
Exercise is demonstrated to improve memory function, both immediately in the short-term, and over the long term of regular exercise and improved physical fitness. Exercise is also known to improve measures of neurogenesis, the creation of new neurons and integration into existing neural networks in the brain. This process is essential to learning and memory. Researchers here investigate the effects of exercise on neurogenesis in mice by labeling neurons in order to determine the contribution of adult neurogenesis to neural networks in the areas of the brain important to memory.
Exercise may prevent or delay aging-...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 26, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
" The Second Request " Podcast Episode Request: Spotting Anticompetitive Conduct in Pharma Supply Chain, with 46brooklyn
The Capitol Forum is what I suppose can be called a Washington, DC-based, center-left leaning investigative news organization. In 2017, the website " Talking Biz News " (which is apparently about the news business)https://talkingbiznews.com/media-moves/whats-behind-capitol-forum-and-its-growth-plans/ operated by Chris Roush, who ' s dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University (a university which happens to be a few miles away from where I grew up, so it seemed legitimate to me) described The Capitol Forum this way: " Digging deep into the connection between business and government regulation. "Anyway, The...
Source: Scott's Web Log - April 12, 2023 Category: Endocrinology Tags: 2023 46Brooklyn Research Antonio Ciaccia drug prices laissez-faire antitrust enforcement Monopoly Problems The Capitol Forum The Second Request podcast Source Type: blogs
" The Second Request " Podcast Episode Recommendation: Spotting Anticompetitive Conduct in Pharma Supply Chain, with 46brooklyn
The Capitol Forum is what I suppose can be called a Washington, DC-based, center-left leaning investigative news organization. In 2017, the website " Talking Biz News " (which is apparently about the news business)https://talkingbiznews.com/media-moves/whats-behind-capitol-forum-and-its-growth-plans/ operated by Chris Roush, who ' s dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University (a university which happens to be a few miles away from where I grew up, so it seemed legitimate to me) described The Capitol Forum this way: " Digging deep into the connection between business and government regulation. "Anyway, The...
Source: Scott's Web Log - April 12, 2023 Category: Endocrinology Tags: 2023 46Brooklyn Research Antonio Ciaccia drug prices laissez-faire antitrust enforcement Monopoly Problems The Capitol Forum The Second Request podcast Source Type: blogs
A foreboding of petrels
I have just finished reading the latest novel in Steve Burrows’ series of “birder murder” stories. This one was called A Foreboding of Petrels and hinges on apparently unconnected murders on the North Norfolk coast and at an environmental research station in The Antarctic.
The plot of the novel alludes to the Storm Petrel, perhaps the world’s most abundant avian species. It and related species have an incredibly sensitive sense of smell and can detect keystone odourant molecules on the wind. Compounds such as dimethyl sulfide (DMS) are released into atmosphere when other organisms are feasting on a...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - March 14, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Birds Environment Source Type: blogs
H5N1 – It ’ s All About the Transmission
by Gertrud U. Rey Recent news headlines have been highlighting the global spread of H5N1, the strain of influenza virus that is typically associated with “bird flu.” This outbreak is the largest in recorded history, involving at least 50 million dead birds and countless non-human mammals, including sea lions, otters, mink, foxes, cats, dogs, and […] (Source: virology blog)
Source: virology blog - March 2, 2023 Category: Virology Authors: Gertrud U. Rey Tags: Basic virology Gertrud Rey avian influenza H5N1 bird flu human-to-human transmission lower respiratory tract pandemic sialic acid upper respiratory tract vaccine Source Type: blogs
