Cardiff University: Understanding all disease prevalence in the UK. “A new website gives the public, health professionals and researchers easy access to data about the prevalence of all diseases in the UK, marking a landmark achievement for global health information analysis.”
University of Waterloo: Search engines and social media can forecast disease outbreaks. “Internet search engine queries and social media data can be early warning signals, creating a real-time surveillance system for disease forecasting, says a recent University of Waterloo study. Using the example of COVID-19, researchers found there was an association between the disease’s prevalence and search engine queries and social media posts.”
KOLO (Nevada): Nevada launches website for kids to learn about zoonotic diseases. “One Health Nevada is an interactive website for kids to learn about how diseases spread between animals and humans and what people can do to keep themselves and animals healthy. The site is geared towards kids involved in 4-H, or those who own pets, livestock, enjoy hunting, fishing or being outdoors. They can also find health tips, activities and educational resources.”
PR Newswire: GIDEON’s Monkeypox eBook Offered Free of Charge to Help Fight the Outbreak (PRESS RELEASE). “GIDEON, the leading infectious diseases database, released their monkeypox eBook at no cost. GIDEON exists to advance the fight against infectious diseases; the timely release of the eBook is another step toward its mission. The ‘Monkeypox: Global Status’ eBook is authored by top infectious disease specialists and doctors, including Stephen Berger MD, the co-founder of GIDEON.” The ebook will be available free for 30 days.
University of Georgia: Creating databases to help cure diseases worldwide. “Jessica Kissinger never set out to make databases. From the time she was a little girl, she wanted to be a biologist. Today, the University of Georgia professor not only studies deadly pathogens like malaria and Cryptosporidium (a waterborne parasite), but also is a driving force behind worldwide, groundbreaking collaborations on novel databases. During her time at UGA, she has received nearly $40 million in federal and private grants and contracts.”
Log Cabin Democrat: Arkansas plant health clinic’s updated plant disease image database now available. “For Arkansas growers, gardeners, and homeowners, the ability to identify plant health issues is critical to the success of their crop. The Arkansas Plant Health Clinic, located in Fayetteville and supported by the Cooperative Extension Service, serves these growers by providing resources to help solve plant disease problems. The clinic’s Plant Disease Image Database, an online image library that lists hundreds of plant diseases, has been recently updated by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s Information Technology department. The database is now available on mobile devices.”
The Register: Scientists reckon eliminating COVID-19 will be easier than polio, harder than smallpox – just buckle in for a wait. “In what is good news to everyone except possibly the most introverted masochists out there, boffins have decided that it is possible to rid the earth of COVID. In fact, it’s probably easier to do than polio, but harder than smallpox, said researchers in the online journal BMJ Global Health. The team of New Zealand public health physicians, epidemiologists, and catastrophic risk researchers compared polio, smallpox, and COVID-19 on technical, sociopolitical, and economic factors.”
Harvard Gazette: Tracking progression of disease through internet searches for symptoms. “You’re not feeling well so you open a search engine and type: fever, dry cough, hoping to find hints of what you may have. A handful of days later, you’re feeling worse, and you type in: trouble breathing. It turns out you’re not the only one who’s doing this, and a Harvard senior’s research project suggests that tracking the results of all those searches can tell us something about the progression of a new disease in individuals and through a population.”
AP: Old records shed new light on smallpox outbreaks in 1700s. “A highly contagious disease originating far from America’s shores triggers deadly outbreaks that spread rapidly, infecting the masses. Shots are available, but a divided public agonizes over getting jabbed. Sound familiar? Newly digitized records — including a minister’s diary scanned and posted online by Boston’s Congregational Library and Archives — are shedding fresh light on devastating outbreaks of smallpox that hit the city in the 1700s.”
EurekAlert: Immediate detection of airborne viruses with a disposable kit!. “The KIST-GIST collaborative research team developed an integrated sampling/monitoring platform that uses a disposable kit to easily collect and detect airborne viruses on-site. The disposable virus sampling/monitoring kit developed by the team is similar to the pregnancy test kit, and enables completion of both sampling and diagnosing on airborne viruses within 50 minutes on-site (10 to 30 minutes of sampling and 20 minutes of diagnosis) without requiring a separate cleaning or separation process.”
Pest Management Professional: ICUP launches website with searchable proceedings. “The executive committee of the International Conference on Urban Pests (ICUP) has unveiled… a new website that offers searchable access to all papers and posters published in its nine previous conferences, since their inception in 1993.”
CNN: How coronavirus affects the entire body. “Coronavirus damages not only the lungs, but the kidneys, liver, heart, brain and nervous system, skin and gastrointestinal tract, doctors said Friday in a review of reports about Covid-19 patients. The team at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City — one of the hospitals flooded with patients in the spring — went through their own experiences and collected reports from other medical teams around the world.”
New York Times: Can an Algorithm Predict the Pandemic’s Next Moves?. “Judging when to tighten, or loosen, the local economy has become the world’s most consequential guessing game, and each policymaker has his or her own instincts and benchmarks. The point when hospitals reach 70 percent capacity is a red flag, for instance; so are upticks in coronavirus case counts and deaths. But as the governors of states like Florida, California and Texas have learned in recent days, such benchmarks make for a poor alarm system.”
Khaleej Times: Dubai developing database on professionals researching infectious diseases. “Dubai is developing a database of professionals specialising in and researching infectious diseases, the Dubai Future Foundation has said in a report. Titled ‘Life after Covid-19: Health’, the report is prepared in collaboration with the Dubai Future Council for Health and Wellbeing, and highlights most significant global post-pandemic trends in the healthcare sector.”
Guelph Now: Researchers Develop New Method Of Analyzing Social Media Data To Identify Potential Disease Outbreaks. “A new method to analyze social media data could help predict future outbreaks of diseases and viruses like COVID-19 and the measles. In a new study, researchers from the University of Waterloo examined computer simulations to develop a new method of analyzing interactions on social media that can predict when a disease outbreak is likely.”
