Science and religion are they compatible?

The NYT has not a dialogue, but a pretty uniformed bit of commentary by people with no real understanding of either science or religion. samples taken from rebuttal letters and what religion and science really say:

"Science begins with the Big Bang theory, and evolution according to Darwin begins with a simple one-cell life. But science can say nothing about what preceded the Big Bang or how life was injected into that simple cell."

Science begins before the Big Bang. Science begins with a singularity prior to the Big Bang. Science also has multiverse theories that account through abstruse mathematical models, why the force of gravity is so weak in our universe. It also explains why our universe must be but one of many. Lisa Randall's simplified view here

How can anyone informed about pre-biotic conditions possibly state that we no nothing prior to cellular life? The simple answer is chemistry. Almost anyone looking for the chemical building blocks of life has found them via tabletop experimentation using plausible chemicals and energies almost certainly found on the pre-biotic earth. From amino acids to ribose to lipid vesicles that are hydrophilic(water loving) on the inside of the membrane to hydrophobic(water fearing) on the outside, we know more and more every day about the conditions of the pre-biotic earth. Even plausible explanations through experimention of the odd chirality of life(left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars) have been demonstated via preferential biases on opposing mineral crystal faces. This is not nothing.

One could poke holes in every one of the rebuttals, but it as simple as this: Religions have immutable truths without data, science has data but no facts that cannot be overturned on good evidence. The two approaches are fundamentally(no pun intended) different and by my simple definition exclude the other.

It is very odd that the two professors of science do see not this simple fact.

I should state here that while I am hard materialist, I would change my entire worldview given sufficient evidence to do so. The religious have all failed this test as the evidence supporting the scientific method as the most powerful tool to interrogate nature yet devised is measured in Everest-like mountains. Religions almost certainly predate history. Long ago they served the purpose of explaining the ineffable. Religion's time as an explanation for anything has passed. Ascribing anything to God's will, is almost always a lack of grasp of the branch of mathematics known as statistics.

There is really nothing new on the ebola front today.

I know that Mali has yet to close its border with guinea, but I thought the Mali must have be now. I was wrong.

Mali struggles to filter passengers from Ebola-hit Guinea. Mali is another poor West African country. When I there in 1996, Mali had the 4th lowest per capita income in the world at roughly 230USD per person. Back then our party crossed the border from Guinea into Mali without even being stopped at the border. Of course that one road from Guinean bush to Malian bush is now well patrolled.

Oddly, it seems likely that our Guinean guide may have crossed into Mali on one of the forested dirt 'roads' linking the two countries.

You ask for a forested route, and the Guineans happily oblige.

That's the rub. While Mali has no reported cases of ebola, the barriers to get into the country are pretty porous.

IF the current outbreak spreads to any neighboring country, Mali, Ivory Coast, and Ghana, seem the likeliest candidates.

Ivory Coast has had cases in chimpanzees, and a primate researcher there contracted the only known human case of the Tae Forest strain of ebolavirus.

Ghana is next door and bats there have been shown to have ebola antigens. Lest you think this a new phenomenon, it is not. CDC report of 2008 on non-migratory fruit bats in Ghana.

Now here is something you might think unexpected. It is not new, but it does expand the range of filoviruses(the ebolas, and Marburg viruses).Ebola-like virus native to Europe discovered.

That brings the number of continents harboring filoviruses to three. Africa, Asia, and Europe.

I do not believe that I have used the term 'filoviruses' in this blog before. I have known the term since roughly the year 1995. As I have often stated I am not a medical or virology expert. I am simply a layperson with a promiscuous range of interests.

More Applesauce..Android L musings, and the likelihood of a new model for Microsoft OS revenues.

Apple is getting no good press about, well, anything these days. Why the tech press keeps adding "gate" as a suffix to new product difficulties is just strange. Essentially, the whyPhone 6 seems to be getting caught in users hair. The complaints are fun to read. Yes, the phones are far more frequently bent than Apple has let on. Meanwhile, some users are reporting widespread iCloud outages across all Apple devices, and non-Apple devices. Still more...Apple has blamed some of the whyPhone 6 problems on..wait for it...unskilled child labor Okay, I hope that this is an attempt at humor, but Apple has indeed relied on child labor for some time. However, internal company audits have shown decreases in this area. We all know that tech companies can be trusted this area. *heavy sarcasm*

Having worked in the field for almost 30 years, I can assure you that the practice is quite widespread among consumer device makers. Samsung, Lenovo, and Apple, are the biggest players that have acknowledged at least some ongoing child labor issues.

I should not that tech cos. are better than other American multi-nationals that have been implicated in more serious allegations going all the way to using "slave labor" in at least part of their manufacturing chains. Philip Morris--merchant of death worldwide--is an affront to rational thought on so many levels that a little thing like child slave labor isn't likely to get in the way of marketing cancer. Chocolate, and of course clothing makers, are also on the greatest hits of infamy lists.

Am I excusing technology cos. by exposing the egregious acts of other industry groups? Absolutely not. Being in the tech field, I simply hold my own to a suitable standard of conduct.

More Applesauce..

iOS 8 still has stability issues, and in addition to no bluetooth connectivity in certain--but widespread--situations, and file deletion in the iCloud, it seems that Apple did a rush job with the Whyphone 6.

Why the stock is till hovering nears all time record levels seems absurd to me.

If I shipped buggy software and hardware packages, I would expect to the clients that rec'd. the 'alpha' versions to dump me quicker than..something that people quickly dump.

Android with Google will almost certainly not make the Apple errors. Even if one believes that Apple products are superior to Google's purest versions of Android delivered on Google hardware, one never hears about Android devices running the stock released version as exhibiting anything like the Cupertino collapse associated with the iOS 8 launch, and the whyPhone 6 debacles. One can almost tell that things at Mountain View are feeling relief at Apple's continued series of growing woes. Oddly, Android 'L's biggest threat to total world domination comes from Android One. Android One is the project that Google is looking at landing the next 5 billion smartphone users.

I really wish that Google had not launched a phone/tablet OS. Even dominant Chinese phone maker Xiomi uses Android with the custom MIUI UI in various iterations based on phone capabilities. Of course, Indian giant Micromax is on board.

As a consumer with typically American deep pockets, any and all phones are potential purchases, but the Google Nexus 6 will be on short list if the phone comes with the rumoured hardware, and Android 'L' is not plagued with issues. Just because someone can afford a really premium phone does not mean that they will buy one. If the Nexus 6 maintains Google's 350USD price tag, That is still over 10x what I paid for my oft talked about LG l34C. I see that the phone now hovers near the 70USD mark. I got in upon release, and paid less than 26USD at the promotional release price.

I know that I am assisting in utter market control by adding to the billion plus Android devices out there. So, the irony is not lost on me.

On to what is likely to be the new Microsoft model for selling OSes. I knew that Microsoft was doing well by offering Office on subscription basis for the enterprise user. Now they are offering the model for small business, which seems to be ostensibly anyone. I have been on many a Microsoft advisory group, and while pay is not any good, I do get free softwares. I was on the Bing pre-launch panel, and still use Bing as my go to search vehicle. I do enough PC and mobile searches to earn something on the order of 185USD per year. I am working towards something here. I have been granted three versions of Office in exchange for a bit of feedback. Microsoft has given me the $9.99 online Office Online sub., a full Office 365, and the business subscription model. I have no idea why I have more than an inlikng as to why I was granted the business subscription. I am getting to the point..

I am pretty sure that Microsoft is going to transition the Windows revenue model to that of a subscription based service. This is not pure speculation, but given that the subscription of their other cash cow..Office, has exceeded even Microsoft's own projections, a subscription based model for distributing all the stuff associated with an OS--including the OS itself--achieves a few goals. It keeps people using Microsoft OSes for at least years to come, and it really smooths out the revenue stream. Am I in favor of such a shift? Sure. One subscription to update your Microsoft devices sounds grand to me.

I should note that I do not own shares in any of these three companies. My 'relationship' with Microsoft really ended years ago. Other than getting perhaps a few hundred dollars of software that I paid for in lost productivity, I now get nothing cool.

Google's largely successful attempts at mobile world domination have me a bit angst ridden. The "don't be evil" co. is far from harmless. I am pulling for Apple and Microsoft every waking moment. My biggest fear is that the rest of the non-corporate world will be satisfied with "good enough computing," and relegate Microsoft and Apple to niche players. If one looks at Google's trajectory into new markets formerly dominated by others, it is looking like a Google world more with each passing day.

Google may not be evil, but consumers at all levels should be concerned about a future lacking choice.

That is the word from the front.

My stock market mode of action appears to have been spot on...no tech news, nor ebola

The major US stock indices are higher this morning as economic data has simply brought more buyers than sellers into the market. My reasoning appears to have been sound. I am no market maven. I simply see things for what they really are at times. Ebola is now seemingly much more of a threat than it was even two days ago, and yet the market is starting the day off higher, I have to run into town for a bit, and then I will likely have tech and ebola news. I know that most medical practice is far from hard science, but the ebola story is really important.

One thing before I am off..

This does not yet work as advertised> I am in the comment section somewhere posting under my real name. I have no special insights as to why D-Wave's quantum processors are slower than the fastest conventional processors in real computational speed, but well, there it is. The simple answer is there are no quantum effects applicable to the level of the processors. As with any nascent technology until it is proven, it is no better than far less expensive options.

Yes, I did write my Master's dissertation on a novel manner of massive parallel computation, but the sum of that knowledge is not applicable to quantum computing(QC). My architecture is now in common use..remember, I wrote that paper in 1985. I am getting no credit for my now proven computational sequencing. I will convert my paper to .pdf and post it somewhere. I have to find the bloody thing first. The simplest explanation is likely the accurate one. One cannot use really simply use the most parsimonious solution in this case. Sorry, William of Ockham, but I cannot use your wonderful tool in this instance.

The system is too potentially chaotic to give it a nice shave.

Sorry about he delay in getting this out. One of my other avocations is that of an OBD II diagnostician. My brother's car needed a bit of time with the scan tool, and I found an O2 senor code that I believe I rectified by applying the old blasted sand-in-a-bag trick. The formerly grimy O2 sensor has a nice new look to it.

More later..

Ebola and the fear factor

*Sigh* What scares you more, Ebola or the flu? (Poll) Jumpin' Jebus on a stick! I took the poll, and when I did influenza was by an enormous stretch, the more scary of the two. Polls like the above scare me more than nearly all pathogens, as questions like the above are as likely as a novel lethal pathogen to cause widespread panic. Journos need be mindful as to just how fear ridden the average US citizen would seem to be.

From the saner side of journalism..Let’s get a grip on Ebola fear in U.S. Weird. Talk about two polar opposites.There are sane people left that can see the ebola issue in the US for what it really is...a non-starter as far as widely dispersed illness and death are concerned.

HuffPo is back to being a sad Internet rag by assisting in spreading the fear. What the butty 'ell is wrong with my fellow citizens? "Up To 18 Exposed To U.S. Ebola Patient, Including Children." What the deuce? Oh no, not CHILDREN! There was a damned good reason why I did not like to link to any of HuffPo's hard hitting journalism. It is because HuffPo sucks as a source of rational discourse.

There has been lots of chatter today attempting to link the US stock markets dive to ebola fears. Whether or not this is true will forever remain speculative. One cannot take a very complex system like the big three US stock markets and pin a single, non-transformative event such as, oh, I don't know, an ebola scare perhaps, and make sweeping statements about market activity.

The US stock markets were pretty highly valued in January of this year. Since then, the major indices have not deflated. Quite the contrary. So, we have a very mature bull market that has weathered lots of headwinds, it will not continue to rise indefinitely. Nor is it likely to spend lots of time meandering in a narrow trading range. Forget ebola and irrational exuberance for a moment. The market is simply undergoing a series of actions bringing the markets closer to the mean.

Lofty evaluations, and lots of profit to be locked in are the things that money managers--which in the short term are almost all simply complex algorithms that are just programmed into computerized trading systems--use as buying and selling tools. In the very short term it is pretty easy to see why individual equities rise and fall. It is almost always computers doing the trading. When there are more buyers than sellers, an equity rises in price. When the inverse occurs, the equity falls in value. The only thing that can be confidently stated about today's market action is this: there were more motivated sellers in the aggregate than there were buyers.

It is simple supply and demand. Tomorrow things may be different. Will "the markets" have 'decided' overnight that the threat of ebola has lessened? Nonsense. This bull market is roughly five and a half years old. All the talk about fear does not equate to lower equities prices. Markets almost always advance despite the fear of loss. In large part this is why removing emotion from the investment process provides positive results.

Oh, I am not a great stock picker as far as timing of events are concerned. Over the long haul my record has been much better.

One more..Ebola Phobia? 5 Reasons Why You Should Not Panic Over This Virus. *sigh* Am I the only person that is certain that if you tell a person not to panic that that is likely to cause a person to panic? The piece is actually very reassuring if you take the time to read and digest it. I suspect that most people will see "ebola" and "panic" and that will freeze their ability to reason.

Just when I thought that this one case of ebola would not escalate any further: Dallas Ebola patient vomited outside apartment on way to hospital. *sigh* It is not hard to see that the old news adage "If it bleeds, it leads" has special meaning at the junction of hemorrhagic fevers and main street, USA.

I was sort of listening to the evening news a bit ago, and yep, the press seems to know that today's stock market action was all about ebola fears. Although often mis-attributed to Lenin, the phrase "useful idiots" seems to precisely sum up the media-stupidity complex that has again reared its ugly head in knee-jerk response to the latest ebola fancy. I am literally shaking my head in disgust over the lapdog response to a crisis that is not on our shores.

Given the numbers of infected and the geographic span of the outbreak it seems almost a given that the US will see another infested person or two before this plague ends. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt will then reign.

Yet there is more concerning US ebola patient zero. This man, a Liberian national made it into country due to human error. Brother.

WhyPhone 6 torture test, and a bit more.

I just returned from my very own attempt to bend the both the whyPhone 6 and the 6S models. Yes, they are flexible phones. I was sort of shocked by how thin the phones are. I did not bend them beyond the rebound point, but I am certain that I easily could have done so. While I found both models to be far stiffer than their appearances would indicate, bending the phones was still very easy.

In normal use for me, I cannot see this as being an issue. My LG L34C bent more easily, but that is at most a 60USD phone. Here is where things got interesting. Whilst my el cheapo LG phone became more difficult to bend once I started to deform it, the Apples lost structural intergrity once the flexing started.

I really think that for most conscientious users, the Apple phones are not likely to give the user any issues.

On the other hand, my LG's vibration motor is now very noticeably louder. Oops. See, I was pretty hard on all three phones.

I did not think it wise to break out a machinist's straight edge to look at phone deformity while at the store, however my LG remains within 0.0025 cm of perfectly true. I can see no light leaking between the phone and the straight edge. The motor is a lot more buzzy.

Summing up: Yes, the whyPhone 6 models are flexible, but not nearly as much as Internet reports would have one believe. If I was an Apple guy, AND I already had a whyPhone model that I was happy with, I would not opt for a 6. If I was physically abusive to technology products, I would not buy one.

The only group to which I can really recommend the 6 to is the group that wants an Apple phone, and does not already have an acceptable model.

More Applesauce...

Since Apple pulled the plug on the iOS 8.0.1 update that it is safe to state that the past two weeks have not been good ones for the clan from Cupertino(you thought I was going to type cult..ha!). Apple has responded to the "bricked" whyPhone 6 update by releasing another update that Wired states fixes some stuff but leaves other nasties alone.

Microsoft gives the next iteration a name..it is a 10!, and--I think this is key--Microsoft is aiming Windows 10 directly at business/enterprise users. It is looking like one Windows for all..we shall see. For me, the promise of one set of APIs sounds great. Microsoft has screwed up before. I hope that Microsoft succeeds with the new product family. If not, it is really looking like Google with Android, search, and ostensibly free services, and no one else. Apple is pretty much a US phenomenon.

Check out the presentation. It is really pretty good. Microsoft's timing is simply that Apple and Google have shiny new stuff to look at, and Microsoft needed another focal point for the tech press. If the Windows 10 actual experience meets or exceeds the presentation, Microsoft should do just that. As long as the code executes quickly, and does not need large amounts of maintenance(i.e. disk defragmentation, manual cache clearing) Windows 10 could be a huge hit.

It seems almost unbelievable, but by the time Windows 10 is available, there could be another billion Internet users. Google is going after the next billion users..or the next 5 billion users. Betting against Google has proven to be an idea that is not so smart.

As much as I do not want Android everywhere, my wants are not in Google's best interest.

Come on Apple, come on Microsoft! That Mountain View behemoth is taking no prisoners! None!

In what should be glaringly obvious, the first US case of ebola..diagnosed here gets news leads across nation

Over 3,100 dead in West Africa, but one isolated case in the US gets US news lead. If I could say so with anything approaching bias against brown peoples, I would. At best this will raise awareness of the West African situation. At worst, it will do nothing but feed on the mis-informed and uninformed fears. Given how fearful that the US id collectively, I know I would place my bet.

In one other ebola bit, the ebola CFR is now at 70% according to the WHO The old WHO case fatality rates were 50%(initially), then 63%. The rise in case fatality rates is not surprising as much more attention is being paid to l'épidémie. The 70% CFR is typical for African outbreaks of the most deadly form of ebolavirus infection(formerly Z-EBOV). It is really difficult to parse how much is due the lethality of the pathogen, and how much is due to shattered health care systems.

As an example, I will use the closely related Marburg virus.

In the West with the best palliative care, the CFR is roughly 25%. The Angola Marburg outbreak of 2005 had a CFR of 93%. Now, do not draw what on the surface seem to be clear differences given differing standards of care. Remember that there are many Marburg variants in a given patient*. RNA viruses do not replicate with error correcting mechanisms. That said, there are two recognized species of Marburg virus yet discovered, and I find no clinically significant difference in the CFR of either species. So, supportive care does appear to make an enormous difference in the survivability of infected individuals. Appear is the key word. I need more supporting data before I form conclusions.

Time to strap on the feedbag.

*To qualify as a new Marburg species, greater than 10% of the nucleotides(RNA in the case of Marburg) must differ. A rather arbitrary figure.

Daily ebola

Sierra Leone crowds mistakenly celebrate ‘end of Ebola’. How is this possible? Thankfully, riot police dispersed the merry makers and issued a curfew. *heavy sarcasm*

MSNBC offers the obvious and lots of images from the frontlines

I have looked closely at bats of the family pteropodidae(Fruit bats), and two of the "Epauletted" Fruit Bats have the geographic ranges that overlap the current ebola outbreak, and one of the two species overlaps every African ebola outbreak. This is not evidence of any real value, but the co-incidence is striking.

I will see what comes up later.

I was going to add some links and speak to the issue of all the orphans that the current ebola outbreak has caused, but the BBC has nailed the sociology and fear surrounding the new orphans.

Yeah, the whyPhone 6 really does bend, and random tech babble

Links to commentary, vids and more. This is why--in part--I don't spend much on tech gadgets. The other part is that as with most all consumer technology products, the product life cycle(PLC) is 18-24 mos. Right now I have a chance to buy a bunch of middle-of-the-road 32" 1080p LED LCD TVs for 125USD ea. They even have decent panels, but I do not know how much I can easily sell them for, as consumers now balk at a 32" piece of real estate. *shrugs* No idea. I have asked a few dozen people in the real world, emailed my kinder, gentler clients, and polled on one of my websites. I have gotten good, solid data complete with logically sequenced addenda ranging from 75USD to 275USD.

Many of the more thoughtful respondents told me that they questioned my sanity for entertaining the offer. Ar 100USD I would be a buyer.

I was considering buying a tablet to tote to sites, and tether to my phone, but with Android L perhaps only days away, the best deal I can find on a tablet that should retain some resale value down the road a bit still sells for $225USD. The tablet is a Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4". The price on the Samsung site is not for cheapskates like me. This is more like it.

Okay, enough meandering. The whyPhone 6 bends. Aluminum does not handle repeated stressors well. It is really that simple. I find it odd that Consumer Reports is being used as the arbiter of phone integrity. My sentences are clipped and my writing style stilted. :)

I should just buy a Chromebook to kick around. I think I must be the only person in the Western World that cannot contend with the contemptible issues of fingerprints on my viewing pane. Most notebook keyboards are pretty awful as well.

Okay, that is all. I must feed wild birds and collect the numerous demands for payment unquestionably resting in my physical mailbox. Ebola later.

Oh. I am going to go and see just how stiff the whyPhone 6 is..if not later today, then tomorrow. Apple fans be warned: I am far stronger than the average typewriter pusher. No vids will be forthcoming as that has been done to death. I will also test my cheaper than dirt LG L34C at the same time.

On Edit: Cleaned up spelling..I left the awful sentence structure and word choices to remind me just how much of a hack I really am.

An odd ebola piece via WaPo, and although I am loathe to use The Huffington Post as a source, well, this is first person stuff

I think that this first piece is meant to assuage American's fears about ebola. Do people here really think that ebola is going to be a pandemic it its current guise? No doubt some do. Ebola is a bad bug for certain. But let us hold onto some perspective. Without further ado: Some good news about Ebola: It won’t spread nearly as fast as other epidemics. Well, that is pretty clear as the current EBOV outbreak has active since late in 2013, and while the infection rate has been ramping up, it is never going to be the ~17 that is ascribed to measles. It is the long, slow burn that is most troubling. I cited the author's paper when it first hit the 'Net. That seemed like an eternity ago.

Meqanwhile, in that sensationalist 'Net tabloid The Huffington Post this hit my feed a bit ago: Ebola In Sierra Leone: 'It Reminded Me Of A Conflict Zone'. A riveting first person account, replete with documentary photos. I tried to chase down the "Inside an Outbreak" series, but I see no such series on HuffPo. I did, however, find this: "Experiences From 7 People At The Front Lines Of The Ebola Crisis" Apparently the series is brand new. The photos in these two pieces are spellbinding. I should follow along but HuffPo is just too celebrity gossipy, icky, sticky for me. I'll add an RSS channel with Amanda Chan and ebola as keywords..Well, that already paid off. Here is another first person account via Ms Chan and HuffPo. Three first person accounts from the ebola frontlines via HuffPo? I thought it was all celebrity worshiping pap. I just peeked at the front page..it is ALMOST entirely ungood stuff.

Even a blind squirrel stumbles across the odd acorn now and again.

Ebola, and the two important stages of the viral illness...Yes, it is tied to something much bigger.

In contagious diseases there are (generally) fives stages of disease. The fifth stage is generally unstated as it is death. Where ebola is concerned we will only focus on three stages, but will combine the prodromal stage (itchy, runny nose, dry eyes, etc.), and the peak (clinical) stage (the disease reaches its highest point of development, severe aches, organ failure, hemorrhaging, etc.) We will refer to this combined stage as the "symptomatic" stage. I am not taking liberties with medical terms. I have it on good authority that this is perfectly acceptable as an explanatory measure.

The first phase is the asymptomatic stage commonly referred to as the incubation stage.

The issue with ebola in very densely populated areas is that ebola is transmissible as early as two days after contagion, and can remain contagious to others for in excess of three weeks in our combined symptomatic stage. How much longer than three weeks may not be precisely known given the 350 mutations of the current ebola strain currently affecting West Africa. The strain is most closely related to the strain formerly known as Ebola Zaire(Z-EBOV). This is not a mere academic exercise. The background is important to get one's head around what is happening in Monrovia, Liberia.

In Monrovia, no one knows to do about ebola. The piece is a good Q&A session. Perhaps the most daunting bits are these:

Q: How do you see events unfolding?

A: I am not optimistic about the immediate future. We're facing a lack of outside support, and a broken-down state trying to do what it can with what it has - which is not much. For me there's no doubt the number of cases will explode in the upcoming weeks and months.

The rainy season is on its way, and the mosquitos will be coming out. Then we'll see an explosion in the number of cases of malaria. This is not going to be easy: there's a risk of mixing up malaria and Ebola, since the symptoms are similar.

Q: You are in charge of the construction of Ebola clinics. Explain exactly what this entails.

A: My job is to set up 500 beds. I think I'll be done in a month. There are a lot of technical issues to consider - how a plot of land is laid out, how big and how accessible it is.

You need 5 000 square metres (5 400 square feet) for a 100-bed clinic - not easy to find in a big city like Monrovia, with marshy terrain. And the heavy rains are an enormous obstacle, as is the high water table which makes it impossible to dig latrines and is forcing us to build septic tanks out of concrete.

Things are dire, and looking to get a lot more dire in the months ahead.

The above was pulled as a blockquote, so I did not fix the metres sq. to feet sq. issue. The corrected data will read: 5,000 square metres (54,000 square feet). The lack of an "e" when pluralizing "mosquito" may be accurate for the region. The malaria-ebola symptom similarities really call for instant pathogen identification. This is medically practical as ebola is caused by a virus, and malaria is caused by single celled parasites of the protozoa plasmodium. The plasmodium parasite is viewable via common light microscopes, whilst viewing ebolavirus particles requires electron microscopy.


However, there are easier ways..the Malaria antigen detection tests can be performed by health workers otherwise unskilled in complex laboratory procedures. Of course even perfect detection/rejection rates--and no method is 100% accurate--will not suffice for people carrying both pathogens. Or for people with Lassa virus which presents much the same as ebola.

It is quite likely that the answerer to the questions--WHO staffer Jean-Pierre Veyrenche--is correct in stating what he did. How do you build a health system in a plague ridden place where time is of the essence and there's little to no supporting infrastructure? Things really are seemingly out of control.

One more after that marathon..

West Africa: Health Experts Call for Gender Specific Approach in Fight Against Ebola. This is a really progressive step. Unless I am mistakened, women have suffered disproportionately in all previous ebola outbreaks as women care for the sick, and are much more involved in preparing the dead for burial. These are two flashpoints for contagion. A wee bit:

"When we collect data and disaggregate the people infected with Ebola by age and gender we can see that up to 75 percent of all new cases are among women," Elias told MediaGlobal News in an exclusive interview. "That indicates that in order to intervene we need gender intentionality in our programming."

In individual case reports that I have read pregnant women are especially susceptible to ebola--and other contagions--as during pregnancy a woman's immunity is low so that the fetus can grow inside the womb without triggering an immune response to a foreign body. I know with a high level of certainty that the latter of the premise is true, so it is more than reasonable that the former is as well.

Ebola and a reading assignment..

First of all, something from my own imagination. Since it has been known since 1992 that certain species of bats of the family Pteropodidae have been found with ebolas and the related Marburg viruses, a quick look at a map of Africa that shows both ebolas and fruit bats(pteropodidae) overlap to a striking degree. I will produce a map later. I would claim that i would get to it today, but I have a client's notebook to repair..with no data loss. Tech forensics--which is what this really is--is a drag. It will likely take me the balance of the day. *sigh*

So, expect new graphs and maps by 1 Oct.

More ebola stuff..

Since the ebola affecred countries are among the world's poorest, it is hardly a surprise that Liberia's health system is quickly becoming more overwhelmed.

Here is an interesting article concerning the militarization of the ebola fight in Liberia. The piece is a nice overview of what the US may possible want in exchange for aid. The article has a nice, healthy undercurrent on anger running through it. I would like to believe that my government is capable of altruism, but there is precious little evidence to support such a belief. The piece is really a good read. I have looked at other people's stuff that are blogging specifically about the ebola crisis. I have simply tried to offer up the underreported stories of an underreported tragedy. Since I cast a very wide net with my RSS reader, I think that I do okay.<.br>
Okay, a couple more before I give you your reading assignment.

Surely the Liberian people are freaked out. Then there is the stigma concerning ebola survivors, then there are reports of ghosts and/or zombies. By the way, AllAfrica is a great resource.

One more ebola piece that states what is so abundantly clear to me that it really does not need be spoken. The Experts The Ebola Response May Need: Anthropologists. Anthropologists? Really? Here is a bit:

"To contain this epidemic we must come to grips with dynamics of fear and obligations of care in a context where everyone is afraid," Kelly co-wrote with colleagues Almudena Marí Sáez and Hannah Brown. "It is an anthropological truism, but this means seeing populations not as a stumbling block to halting the spread but as our only resource."

"These people have lived with and around animals for generations, but have never seen this kind of disease," she writes. Thus, "the epidemic becomes linked instead to practices never before seen or out of context: disinfecting houses, erecting barriers, taking relatives to the hospital, from where they do not return."

"Disease becomes then a logical extension of the efforts of government officials and foreigners," she writes. Anthropologists could bridge that gap.

Duh-fuh? All of the human touch stuff is true. In fact, triusm is nearly the ideal word as it is so clear that it not need warrant comment. As far as the people of West Africa never having "seen this kind of disease," well, that is simply wrong. Viral hemorrhagic fevers(VHFs) are fairly common in the area. Lassa fever presents with many of the same symptoms as the ebolas. That is simply one of the VHFs endemic to the region. I am a semicon gate engineer by training, but I have wide enough interests to know not to state specious things..unless I toss out the "speculation disclaimer."

Okay, enough ebola stuff, onto your reading assignment.

A lovely friend that knows me perhaps too well, gave me a book yesterday morning. Once I started reading it, I could not put it down. It is an ideal companion to where this blog is currently focused, and is better than everything combined that I had yet read concerning emerging--and emerged--diseases. It is not specifically about ebola, but ebola gets lots of time. The book is: The Viral Storm by eminent virologist Nathan Wolfe. If you are interested at all in virology, pathogenic bacteriology, epidemiology, and/or the die off of amphibians, this book is must read. Really, if you are reading to this point, you need to get hold of this book and several hours of time. It is not that good, it is better.