stuff, marburg correction, robotic competitions

WOOHOOOO!

we have done it, (or at least finally admitted to it..... again). We have irrevocably (on the human time-scale) altered the earth for the worst. here is a quick excerpt: Study highlights global decline
The most comprehensive survey ever into the state of the planet concludes that human activities threaten the Earth's ability to sustain future generations.
The report says the way society obtains its resources has caused irreversible changes that are degrading the natural processes that support life on Earth.
end except. (here is another story on same subject)
And the 'best' part is that we won't have to clean it all up, it will be the problem of our children and grand children. Thats the wonderful thing about ecological problems, they tend to run on a time scale just barely longer than that of a single human life so people just ignore them.... let the next generation deal with it. I have seen the next generation and wonderful though it might be, I do not know that it will be any better at dealing with this.

On a (heh) happier note, Exercise is suggested as a good step in combatting depression.

The BBC has a great list of the top 10 unusual accidents in the UK, number 2 looks like the result of guys lighting their farts on fire.

On a more serious note, the Marburg virus outbreak continues and has Scientists Puzzled. They are trying to figure out why this rare disease showed up and why it seems to be attacking children. Considering that this virus is not very infectious (close contact required) how are all these children passing it around but no the adults. It is also weird in its location (geographical).

I need to correct something I said earlier about Marburg. I said that it had a 90% death rate. That is incorrect. Marburg has historically had between 23 and 75% death rate. Better but not by much. There is no known treatment (lassa is the only hemorrhagic fever I know of with a treatment) or vaccine. Containment is the only answer and that tends to be pretty easy due to the low level of transmissibility.

Ingenuity trumps cash, yet again. This time around an underwater robotics contest was won by a group of illegal mexcian-american immigrants who built their robot in three days for 800 bucks against teams that spent months and up to 11 thousand (including MIT). Here is the full story from wired. And just to hammer home the point, wired did a recent article on another robotics (highschool level only) competition called FIRST that, year after year, is won by schools with almost no budget and students from lower scoio-economic status over schools with big budgets and major funding and high socio-economic standing.

An ACTUAL cause may have been found for autism, as opposed to the fear-mongering that has been going on lately.

and thats all for now.