Web tool puts wildlife diseases on the map

A new online map makes it possible, for the first time, to track news of disease outbreaks around the world that threaten the health of wildlife, domestic animals, and people.

The Global Wildlife Disease News Map was developed jointly by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Updated daily, the map displays pushpins marking stories of wildlife diseases such as West Nile virus, avian influenza, chronic wasting disease, and monkeypox. Users can browse the latest reports of nearly 50 diseases and other health conditions, such as pesticide and lead poisoning, by geographic location. Filters make it easy to focus on different disease types, affected species, countries, and dates.

The map is a product of the Wildlife Disease Information Node (WDIN), a five-year-old collaboration between UW-Madison and two federal agencies, the National Wildlife Health Center and the National Biological Information Infrastructure, that are part of the U.S. Geological Survey. WDIN is housed within the university’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the USGS.

A powerful feature of the wildlife disease news map is its ability to tap into the WDIN’s large and growing electronic library of information from around the globe.

“If you click on the name of a particular disease, it takes you to our main Web site and does a quick search of everything that we have on that topic,” says Cris Marsh, a librarian who oversees the wildlife disease news services for the WDIN.

State and federal wildlife managers, animal disease specialists, veterinarians, medical professionals, educators, and private citizens will all find the news map useful for monitoring wildlife disease, adds Marsh.

Produced by WDIN staffer Megan Hines, the map is the latest addition to a suite of tools aimed at keeping users abreast of wildlife disease appearances. The WDIN gathers news from more than 20 online sources and makes it available in a number of handy formats, from a Wildlife Disease News Digest at wdin.blogspot.com to desktop widgets, e-mail, and RSS feeds.

Ultimately, the WDIN seeks to provide a comprehensive online wildlife disease information warehouse, according to project leader Josh Dein, a veterinarian with the Madison-based USGS wildlife health center.

“People who collect data about wildlife diseases don’t currently have an established communication network, which is something we’re working to improve,” says Dein. “But just seeing what’s attracting attention in the news gives us a much better picture of what’s out there than we’ve ever had before.”

Concerns about the emergence and spread of diseases that can pass between species have forged new links in recent years between wildlife health, human health, and domestic animal health professionals.

“It all ties in together,” says Marsh. “The West Nile virus acted as a catalyst for that connection. People in different areas in the eastern U.S. began to see isolated incidences of dead and dying crows that seemed abnormally high, but nobody knew other areas were experiencing the same thing.”

Because West Nile virus also affects humans and other mammals, it became apparent to scientists that disease outbreaks of this kind need to be addressed as quickly as possible, explains Marsh. Outbreaks of monkeypox and highly pathogenic avian influenza soon afterward underscored the importance of linking information about emerging diseases across all species.

“If scientists share with one another the information they’re collecting on the patterns of diseases like these, we can respond to outbreaks much more efficiently,” says Marsh.

Besides providing news services, WDIN collaborates with a wide variety of public and private entities to gather and provide access to important wildlife disease data. Because of the global significance of these diseases, WDIN encourages others to become involved with the project.

“The more information we can link,” says Marsh, “the more robust our service becomes.”

Manmohan shown images from Cartosat-2A

Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman G. Madhavan Nair on Monday presented to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh the first lot of high quality images received from the recently launched satellites Cartosat-2A and the Indian Mini Satellite-1 (IMS-1).

Excited space scientists who accompanied Dr. Nair pointed out the exact spot where they were located. “Here we are,” they told the Prime Minister as he looked at the images and appreciated their clarity.

Cartosat-2A and IMS-1 were launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on April 28 when a total of 10 small satellites were successfully put in orbit.

Future plans

The high-quality cameras are capable of sending back high-resolution images.

Dr. Nair and other scientists briefed the Prime Minister on not only the latest success of ISRO but also its future programmes that include manned space flight and the mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-1.

A scale model of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C9 that put the satellites in orbit was also presented to the Prime Minister.

Oxygen vanishing from tropical oceans: scientists

An international team of physical oceanographers has discovered that oxygen-poor regions of tropical oceans are expanding as the oceans warm, limiting the areas in which predatory fishes and other marine organisms can live or enter in search of food.

The results of the study was released on Thursday and will appear in the May 2 issue of journal Science.

The researchers found through analysis of a database of ocean oxygen measurements that oxygen levels in tropical oceans at a depth of 300 to 700 meters have declined significantly during the past 50 years. The width of the low-oxygen zone is expanding deeper but also shoaling toward the ocean surface.

"We found the largest reduction in a depth of 300 to 700 meters in the tropical northeast Atlantic, whereas the changes in the eastern Indian Ocean were much less pronounced," said Lothar Stramma, lead research from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Germany.

"Whether or not these observed changes in oxygen can be attributed to global warming alone is still unresolved. The reduction in oxygen may also be caused by natural processes on shorter time scales," said Stramma.

Researchers say that these low-oxygen zones are "underwater deserts," which will likely have far-reaching impacts on ecosystems because important organism can not survive in them.

NASA names planet after Kerala professor

In a rare honour, the US space agency NASA has named a 'minor' planet after a Kerala zoology professor in appreciation of his environmental research.

Sainudeen Pattazhy, who teaches in a college in Kollam, received a phone call from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory run by the space agency Wednesday that the minor planet '5178 CD4' has been named after him.

The planet was discovered in 1989 by US-based scientist Rajmohan, who - on coming to know of the research conducted by Sainudeen on many ecological and environmental issues - proposed that the planet be given Sainudeen's name.

"I did not believe it (initially), but later came to terms with what the caller had said," said Pattazhy, who teaches at the S.N.College here.

The minor planet will now be known as '5178 Pattazhy

Over the last several years, Sainudeen, an unassuming college professor, has done pioneering research work on environment related subjects that won him recognition.

He carried out research on the red rain that took place in the state in 2001. He also researched on the effect of mobile phone towers and the eco-biology of 'holy groves'.

"I am happy that my little village has now got a new identity," said Sainudeen.

The International Astronomical Union has allotted numbers to 185,685 minor planets or asteroids of the nearly 400,000 such items in the solar system.

New circuit element devised

As all science students know, there are only three basic elements that make up an electrical circuit: the resistor, the capacitor and the inductor.

Sorry guys! It may be time to tear up your textbooks and write new ones: scientists have realised physical samples of a fourth fundamental element which they call a memristor —short for memory resistor.

In a paper published in the latest issue of Nature magazine (‘The missing memristor found’; May 1, 2008; vol no. 453; pp 80-83), researchers at Hewlett Packard Labs, U.S., report that the ‘missing’ fourth element of circuitry that Professor Leon Chua of the University of California in Berkeley predicted in 1971 is indeed realisable.

The team, led by R. Stanley Williams, believes that using nano technology one can soon build practical units of the resistor-with-memory that cannot be created by a mere combination of the three basic circuit elements.

Such elements could fuel a new class of computer memory that would ‘remember,’ even if the machine were switched off.... in other words, tomorrow’s PCs could boot up and spring to life instantly.

The engineers are busy building memristors using titanium dioxide and have already realised a few hybrid versions in silicon.

Memory banks built using memristors could be a thousand times faster than today’s magnetic disk systems, and consume a fraction of the power, the scientists suggest.