This article on StickyMinds.com is about bed bugs (rather than software bugs) and how to react in a crisis. It’s quite interesting at that level, even if you’re not a software developer.
But what amazed me is:
Nine thousand years ago, people were having their teeth drilled and filled. Remains found in Pakistan show that in one case, a person had had three teeth filled, another had two holes drilled in the same tooth. And the practice spanned a period of at least 1500 years.
... if Shripad Tuljapurkar of Stanford University is right. He thinks that by 2050 the retirement age may have to be raised to 85 and that 50 or 75 year mortgages will be being offered. He expects life-expectancy to rise by one year each year between 2010 and 2030. (This view clashes that held by other experts, who warn that life expectancy may drop by several years due to the health problems that people in the industrialised nations have developed – too many calories and too few vegetables and fruit causing obesity, diabetes and other “civilization diseases”). Frankly, the prospect of working for around 40-45 years doesn’t thrill me with joy today – the thought of working for 65 years makes me think maybe the present isn’t such a bad time to be alive.
Dr Leon Bennun, Director of Science, Policy and Information for BirdLife International, raises an interesting possibility in the BBC’s Green Room series – he points out that the outbreaks lie mainly on major trade routes, rather than on the routes taken by migrating birds. And countries which have implemented strict controls on importing and movement of poultry, such as Japan and South Korea, have had no outbreaks after the controls were imposed:
In fact, countries which have not yet developed a large-scale intensive poultry industry have also been largely spared. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that in Laos, 42 out of 45 outbreaks affected intensive poultry units.So – it could be that avian flu is largely caused by the overcrowded, insanitary conditions in many large intensive poultry-farms. As Bennun says of the dying swans being reported across Europe:
They may have caught the disease from other wild birds; but this is unlikely given the tens of thousands of waterfowl that have tested negative for H5N1 over the last decade. Much more likely is that before starting out, they picked up the virus from farms, either from infected poultry or their faeces. Mute swans often graze agricultural fields, and are likely to have come into contact with poultry manure spread as a fertiliser.
If wild birds had been spreading the disease across continents there would have been trails of outbreaks following migration routes; but this hasn’t happened…
Phenolic compounds in olive oil, which have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-clotting properties, may explain cardiovascular health benefits associated with the so-called Mediterranean Diet, according to a new study in the Nov. 15, 2005, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Forget BMI as a risk factor for heart attacks. A new study published in the Lancet shows that when other factors are are taken into account, the body mass index (BMI) is irrelevant as a predictor for heart attacks, but that the ratio of your waist to hip measurements gives an excellent warning of your risk.
Divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement. If you are a man, and the result is under 0.90 you are not at risk, if you are a woman, the factor to beat is tougher- you need to be under 0.85 to be considered healthy.
You can get a good rundown on your current health and how it affects your life expectancy at www.agingresearch.org. Takes both imperial and metric measurements for your weight and height, which are required input for the evaluation. (Click the red button on the page if you want to avoid giving your contact details.)
Bob Brotchie, a paramedic in the UK, had the original idea – over 75% of the UK population doesn’t carry any form of ID with them, and even if they do, it is not clear who should be contacted in the case of an emergency. He suggested putting an entry in the address of book of your mobile phone under “ICE” (in case of emergency), indicating the phone number to be called if you are involved in an accident or become incapacitated for other reasons. If you have more than one contact, you can label them ICE1, ICE2 etc. There is usually enough space in the mobile phone’s address book to add more information in the name / address fields – for example “mother”, “brother – work number”, or whatever.
The idea has spread rapidly in the English speaking world – for example, if you check out Vodafone’s web sites, you’ll find information on their New Zealand site, the UK site and vodafone.com. You don’t find a single word about it on their German site, however. Which is a pity, as the idea is a good one, and it makes sense to use the English acronym, rather than a local one (such as “IN” – im Notfall in German speaking countries for example) – many people go abroad on business or vacation and a standard acronym is the only way they are going to get their message across abroad.
If you follow this idea, you might also want to identify your mobile phone with a small label on the back, so that the medic knows who you are too. And remember, the ICE doesn’t make other forms of ID obsolete. It is still a good idea to carry some other form of ID, or medical details with you. Your phone may be damaged or the battery may not be charged when the paramedics need it.
The Swiss drug company Roche has donated 3 million doses of Tamiflu to the World Health Organsiation. Tamiflu is one of the drugs that will be used to try and contain avian flu if when it makes the jump to humans in the near future.
Research carried out in London and Atlanta shows that although bird flu could affect half the world’s population with a 50% mortality rate, the right actions taken in the first three months could limit the number of cases to less than 100 in the first two months. The key to containing an outbreak is treating the first people infected and those who may have come in contact with them as soon as possible. To do this, the World Health Organisation (WHO) needs to have 3 million doses of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu available to use anywhere in the world and good surveillance systems at local level, particularly in at-risk countries in south-east Asia, for fast detection of the virus’s emergence and accurate diagnosis.
Currently the WHO has only 120 000 doses of Tamiflu available, and timely reporting and treating of cases of suspected bird flu in humans in Asia has often not happened.
It’s good to see a chance of beating a bird flu epidemic (which experts increasingly state is not a question of “if”, but of “when”), but there is a lot needs to be done by governments around the world to make it possible.