Pen-tailed Treeshrew

I came upon this article on The New York Times on how human beings and animals behaved differently according to species.

It strikes me when the author, Olivia Judson mentioned that a species native to our country actually consume alcohol the equivalent of 12 glasses of wine everyday.

Out of curiosity, i googled it and found an article of the animal called Pen-tailed Treeshrew (or (Ptilocercus lowii in latin). The treeshrew belongs to the family of Ptilocercidae and they spend every night drinking naturally-fermented nectar of the bertram palm.

This total up to 10-12 glasses of wine with 3.8% alcohol content. Amazing isn't it?

Wait..hold your horses. it was found that after consuming this amount of alcohol, they show no signs of intoxication!

Despite Recession, Fearful Brazilians Keep Armored Car Sales Booming

I am a Malaysian, almost everyday, i have the chance to read about news of Malaysians being robbed while walking the streets by motorcyclists, or their car was smashed into while their car was park in dark alleys (so that the thieves could steal their expensive stereos).

The crime rate has been on the rise on a recent note, namely in urban areas or densely populated areas, eg. Cheras, Kepong or Wangsa Maju.

Citing an example, there was a college student who was waiting for his scheduled trip at the Puduraya bus station. It was at night, he did not suspect anything out of the ordinary when suddenly, a group of young Malays in their early twenties begun to gather around the premises.

Sensing something out of the blue, the Chinese youngster set off immediately. He then sense someone called him"adik" (which means younger brother in Malay). He turned aound, and next thing he knew, he was dealt a number of strong blows by the gangsters, each wielding a wooden stick on their hands.

Despite the severals blows that was inflicted upom him, he managed to escaped and lodged a police report..not before a so-called "self respected samaritan" came to the rescue. The boy gave gave his wallet to the passer-by out of trust that he would help him make a police report -- only to find himself rob of his wallet.

In a seperate note, several days ago, 2 pregnant woman has been killed in 2 seperate robbery cases, one is a motor rider that was pulled down from her bike, another one is a pedestrian.

Do we have to reseort to what Brzilians had been doing now - upgrading our beloved cars to

armoured vehicles and drive it everyday with escorts? Then what would it be like staying in our once peaceful country?

Day 3: Tracking Swine Flu

Headlines of the day: U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu
April 26, 2009, New York, Washington
American health officials declared a public health emergency on Sunday as 20 cases of swine flu were confirmed in this country, including eight in New York City.

Warning: Top global flu experts struggled to predict how dangerous the new A (H1N1) swine flu strain would be as it became clear that they had too little information about Mexico’s outbreak — in particular how many cases had occurred in what is thought to be a month before the outbreak was detected, and whether the virus was mutating to be more lethal, or less.

“We’re in a period in which the picture is evolving,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, deputy director general of the World Health Organization. “We need to know the extent to which it causes mild and serious infections.”

Without that knowledge — which is unlikely to emerge soon because only two laboratories, in Atlanta and Winnipeg, Canada, can confirm a case — his agency’s panel of experts was unwilling to raise the global pandemic alert level, even though it officially saw the outbreak as a public health emergency and opened its emergency response center.

As a news conference in Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called the emergency declaration “standard operating procedure,” and said she would rather call it a “declaration of emergency preparedness.”

“It’s like declaring one for a hurricane,” she said. “It means we can release funds and take other measures. The hurricane may not actually hit.”

The emergency declaration in the United States lets the government free more money for antiviral drugs and give some previously unapproved tests and drugs to children(!). One-quarter of the national stockpile of 50 million courses of antiflu drugs will be released.
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Confirmed cases

• As of Monday, officials had confirmed 42 cases of a new A(H1N1) swine flu virus in the United States, including 28 New York City high school students.
  
• 6 cases were identified in Canada — all linked to travel in Mexico.
  
• While the World Health Organization says 20 swine flu cases in Mexico have been confirmed, officials say there are at least 1,600 suspected infections and at least 149 suspected deaths.
  
• 1 infection was confirmed in eastern Spain.

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Swine flu and humans

• Swine flu viruses can be passed between pigs and humans, but human infections are not common.
• Most infections occur among people with direct pig contact.
• Sometimes a flu virus can mutate to be more transmissible to humans.
• An outbreak occurred among soldiers in Fort Dix, N.J., in 1976, resulting in 200 infections, several serious illnesses and one death.
  

Human symptoms

• All flus are passed by coughs and sneezes. Symptoms can include fever, fatigue, coughing, vomiting and diarrhea.
• Seasonal flus typically kill the old and young.
• New flus like this one can kill healthy people whose own immune reactions overwhelm them.

Vaccine and treatments

• Officials do not know if the seasonal flu vaccine will protect against the A(H1N1) swine flu virus.
• In the laboratory, the antiviral drugs Tamiflu and Relenza are effective against this new flu; amantadine and rimantadine are not.

Swine flu versus avian flu

• The avian flu, A(H5N1), is found among birds and humans and is highly lethal but not very transmissible.
• Scientists believe this new flu is more transmissible but less lethal.

Precautions

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends

1. washing hands frequently,
2. avoiding touching the face,
3. covering the nose and mouth when sneezing
4. staying home when sick.
5. People cannot be infected by eating pork.
   
   

Day 2 : Mexico Takes Powers to Isolate Cases of Swine Flu

April 25, 2009 MEXICO CITY — This sprawling capital was on edge Saturday as jittery residents ventured out wearing surgical masks and President Felipe Calderón published an order that would give his government emergency powers to address a deadly flu outbreak, including isolating those who have contracted the virus, inspecting the homes of affected people and ordering the cancellation of public events.

The new swine flu strain that has already killed as many as 81 people in Mexico and sickened more than 1,300 others.

20 of the 81 reported deaths were confirmed to have been caused by swine flu, while the rest are being studied. Most of the cases of illness were reported in the center of the country, but there were other cases in pockets to the north and south.

The possible New York cases were reported at a Queens high school, where eight students tested positive for a type of influenza that health officials suspect could be the new swine flu. Some of the school’s students had traveled to Mexico recently.

Still, the World Health Organization, which held a meeting on Friday to discuss the outbreak, chose not to raise the level of global pandemic flu alert, which has been at a Level 3 because of the avian flu.

Swine Flu Day 1: Mexico Fights Deadly Flu

Friday April 24, 2009

MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials, scrambling to control a swine flu outbreak that has killed as many as 61 people and infected possibly hundreds more in recent weeks, closed museums and shuttered schools for millions of students in and around the capital on Friday, and urged people with flu symptoms to stay home from work.

Because of the situation, the WHO planned to consider raising the world pandemic flu alert to 4 from 3. Such a high level of alert — meaning that sustained human-to-human transmission of a new virus has been detected — has not been reached in recent years, even with the H5N1 avian flu circulating in Asia and Egypt, and would “really raise the hackles of everyone around the world,” said Dr. Robert G. Webster, a flu virus expert at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.

Despite the alarm in recent years over the H5N1 avian flu, which is still circulating in China, Indonesia, Egypt and elsewhere, some flu experts argued that it would never cause a pandemic, because no H5 strain ever had. All previous pandemics have been caused by H1s, H2s or H3s.