submitted by George Hurlburt

Raymond Koundouno using a MinION - Sophie Duraffour

The MinION, a pocket-sized, USB-powered sequencing machine, lets scientists track the spread of deadly diseases in real-time.

theatlantic.com - by Ed Yong - September 16, 2015

. . . Unlike rival sequencers, which are as big as microwaves or fridges, the MinION is the size of a chocolate bar. . . . These devices quite literally bring the power of modern genomics to the palm of your hand. And at a cost of just $1,000, they herald a new era where sequencing moves away from well-equipped institutions and into places where it is most needed, from hospitals to epidemic-afflicted hot zones.

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(CLICK HERE - MinION - Oxford Nanopore Technologies)

(CLICK HERE - YouTube - MinION - Oxford Nanopore Technologies)

wired.com- September 15, 2015 - Mary-Rose Abraham

A pile of puppies cower under a parked car. The men grab one, but two escape down the street, forcing them to give chase. Five scrappy adult shorthairs – of an indiscriminate breed commonly known as an ‘Indian dog’ – appear from nowhere.

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Image: Staphylococcus. Getty Images.

wired.com- September 17th, 2015 - Sarah Zhang

Instead of the usual doom and gloom about antibiotic resistance, let’s begin with the good news. A new global report on antibiotic use, released yesterday, actually found a drop in Staph bacteria resistant to the antibiotic methicillin in countries seriously tackling drug resistance—places across Europe, the US, Canada, and South Africa. The boring stuff like handwashing and antibiotic stewardship? It works.

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Image: A masked man walks past trees shrouded with pollution haze in Beijing, China. Andy Wong/AP

npr.org - September 16th, 2015 - Susan Brink

More people die prematurely because of the air they breathe than the 2.8 million who die each year of HIV/AIDS and malaria combined.

That's the startling statistic from a new study in this week's journal Nature. The annual global death toll from outdoor air pollution is 3.3 million. (Premature death is a medical term that means a usually preventable death that occurs before expected — for instance, earlier than the life expectancy of age 78 in the U.S.).

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USA TODAY by Bart Jansen                           Sept. 19, 2015

WASHINGTON – Federal authorities will end mandatory Ebola screening Monday for travelers from Liberia to five U.S. airports, but will continue to scrutinize travelers from Sierra Leone and Guinea, federal officials announced Friday.

The Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection had provided extra screening for more than 30,000 travelers during the past year, after an outbreak of the often fatal disease in West Africa.....

Customs and Border Protection and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agreed to remove Liberia from the list of countries subject to enhanced visa and port-of-entry screening, effective Monday....

The U.S. will maintain extra screening for travelers from Sierra Leone and Guinea, which still see a handful of new cases each week, and for people who traveled through those countries during the previous three weeks.

Read complete story.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/09/18/ebola-travel-airport-screening-liberia-sierra-leone-guinea-customs-border-protection/72398942/

CLICK HERE - Living Blue Planet Report 2015

Populations of some commercial fish stocks, such as a group including tuna, mackerel and bonito, had fallen by almost 75 percent.

huffingtonpost.com - by Andy Campbell - September 16, 2015

A disturbing new report published by the World Wildlife Fund found that the world marine vertebrate population declined by 49 percent between 1970 and 2012.

The Living Blue Planet Report -- analyzed by the Zoological Society of London and issued as an update on our oceans' health -- also found that local and commercial fish populations have been cut in half, tropical reefs have lost nearly half of their reef-building coral, and there are 250,000 metric tons of plastic in our oceans.

This earthquake can have a medium humanitarian impact based on the Magnitude and the affected population and their vulnerability.

    Earthquake Magnitude 8.3M, Depth:25km
    on 16 Sep 2015 22:54 UTC
    140385 people within 100km
    inserted at 17 Sep 2015 00:48:18 UTC

CLICK HERE - GDACS - Earthquake Summary

CLICK HERE - GDACS - Tsunami Impacts

CLICK HERE - NOAA - National Tsunami Warning Center - Event Observations and Forecasts

CLICK HERE - NOAA - United States - Tsunami Advisory

CLICK HERE - USGS - Earthquake Summary

CLICK HERE - Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC)

CLICK HERE - PTWC - Tsunami Threat Message

Clusters of social vulnerability in rural Liberia, by district. Social vulnerability of each cluster of districts can be loosely ranked from most to least vulnerable as: Cluster 1, food quality, displaced persons, disabled, dependent populations; Cluster 3, food quantity, food quality, lack of access to land/free medical care; Cluster 4, food quantity, disabled dependent populations and Cluster 5, water quality/proximity to medical care; and finally, Cluster 2, no strong vulnerability scores.

CLICK HERE - Social Vulnerability and Ebola Virus Disease in Rural Liberia

CLICK HERE - Social Vulnerability and Ebola Virus Disease in Rural Liberia (14 page .PDF file)

srs.fs.usda.gov - by Zoe Hoyle - September 15, 2015

A newly published research study by U.S. Forest Service researchers demonstrates that the social vulnerability indices used in climate change and natural hazards research can also be used in other contexts such as disease outbreaks.

REUTERS    Sept.14, 2015
FREETOWN — Health authorities quarantined hundreds of people in northern Sierra Leone on Monday after a 16-year-old girl died of Ebola in an apparent case of sexual transmission, the first confirmed death from the virus in the district for nearly six months.

Sierra Leone celebrated last month when it discharged the last remaining Ebola patient from its treatment centers. But since then a new spate of cases has erupted, leaving two dead and five people in treatment.

The teenage girl, Kadiatu Thullah, died on Sunday at the International Medical Corps Ebola treatment unit, authorities said.

Emmanuel Conteh, head of the Ebola Response Centre for the district of Bombali in northern Sierra Leone, said that some 690 people in the village of Robuya where Kadiatu lived would be isolated for three weeks....it.

Conteh said health workers were investigating how the teenager got infected, since she had not traveled outside the village in years. Initial suspicions are that she had sex with an Ebola survivor.

Read complete story.

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/quarantines-return-ebola-makes-comeback-sierra-leone

This chart shows how Antarctic ice would be affected by different emissions scenarios. “GTC” stands for gigatons of carbon. Ken Caldeira and Ricarda Winkelmann

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Combustion of available fossil fuel resources sufficient to eliminate the Antarctic Ice Sheet

newsweek.com - by Zoë Schlanger - September 11, 2015

“Combustion of available fossil fuel resources sufficient to eliminate the Antarctic Ice Sheet.”

Few peer-reviewed study titles sound quite so much like a line spoken by the bad-news-bearing scientist from a dystopian sci-fi movie. But there it is. A real-world—and apparently very possible—dystopia.

                                (CLICK ON THE MAP IMAGE BELOW - GO TO THE INTERACTIVE MAP)

UNHCR - Syria Regional Refugee Response - Inter-agency Information Sharing Portal
http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php

UNHCR - Stories from Syrian Refugees - Discovering the human faces of a tragedy
http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/syria.php

cdc.gov

Interim Guidance for U.S. Hospitals on the Care of a Neonate Born to a Mother who is Confirmed to have Ebola, is a Person under Investigation (PUI), or has been Exposed to Ebola

Who this is for: Healthcare professionals working with neonates in labor and delivery, neonatal intensive care units, newborn nurseries, and other settings in U.S. hospitals.

What this is for: Guidance on how to care for neonates born to mothers exposed to Ebola virus, PUIs, or with confirmed Ebola.

How to use this: This guidance is intended to help U.S. hospitals develop plans for treating neonates born to PUIs or to mothers with confirmed Ebola. Note: Ideally, these mothers and neonates will be cared for in Ebola assessment hospitals (if the mother is a PUI) or Ebola treatment centers (if the mother is confirmed to have Ebola.)1

CLICK HERE - Care of a Neonate Born to a Mother who is Confirmed to have Ebola, is a Person under Investigation, or has been Exposed to Ebola

THE LANCET by Richard Horton                         Sept. 12, 2015

LONDON-- Post-Ebola reverie has given birth to a plethora of expert panels to consider what went wrong. The latest parade of global health specialists appointed to learn lessons gathered at the Wellcome Trust in London last week.
 Under the auspices of the US Institute of Medicine (IOM), a Commission to “deliberate and evaluate options to strengthen global, regional, and local systems to better prepare, detect, and respond to epidemic diseases” spent 2 days amassing evidence.

 There was no shortage of experience brought to bear on these important matters. Here were Margaret Chan, Jeremy Farrar, Ilona Kickbusch, David Heymann, Larry Gostin, Joy Phumaphi, Joanne Liu, and Peter Piot all wrestling with a seemingly intractable challenge. The statements offered to the Commission were arresting. But  the purpose of the meeting was not to talk. It was to identify the best system for an epidemic response....
Read complete article

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2900152-X/fulltext

KATHMANDU, NEPAL - AUGUST 13: A young boy plays in the mud in a flooded lane inside the Chuchepati displacement camp on August 13, 2015 in Kathmandu, Nepal. About 7,144 people, hailing from different affected districts by the earthquake that hit Nepal, currently live in Chuchepati camp, with access to only 35 toilets and the help of only a few NGOs. Approximately 60,000 people are still living in over 100 official displacement camps throughout the affected districts.  OMAR HAVANA VIA GETTY IMAGES

huffingtonpost.com - by Eleanor Goldberg - September 3, 2015

It’s been four months since Nepal’s deadliest earthquake hit. Yet, the country still has yet to dole out a cent of the $4.1 billion in donations it received, Reuters reported. . . .

. . . According to the news outlet, the government won’t start spending the relief funds until October. The delay is due to reluctance to start building work during monsoon season and the fact that plans still require approval.

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(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

submitted by George Hurlburt

Sleeplessness, along with abdominal and joint pain are common even months after recovery from the dreaded virus

scientificamerican.com - by Dina Fine Maron - September 9, 2015

The first snapshot of health complications facing Ebola survivors in Sierra Leone presents a dismal picture of their road to recovery. A new study has found that up to four months after blood tests indicated that they were Ebola-free, more than half of survivors continue to suffer from joint pain, headaches or muscle pain. And more than 40 percent of survivors complain of sleeplessness and visual problems. Perhaps most worryingly, almost all the survivors—96 percent—reported being rejected by their communities after they were released from the hospital. The majority said they were still too scared to return home.