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POPSDeja vu in Viet Nam once again - Bird flu strikes again They have been trying culling, shots and all the classical ways of controlling a disease and it's not working - why? Because they need to think outside of the box and find ways to get farmers to help end pandemic scourge in a new way - turning bird droppings into methane gas by "cooking" it and at same time kill bird flu and potential human flu.
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POPSIndia has had bird flu but is banning poultry related products from nations that have had it too - I India has meat eaters but is predominately a vegan nation - but they raise poultry to export and have had outbreaks of avian flu in their flocks. Now they are banning importation of poultry products from other nations that have similarly afflicted. It all sounds a bit ironic, oxymoronic, and strange. Will they complain when and if other nations ban the import of birds from India? There are smart ways to break the pandemic threat but India and others are not looking beyond the easy and political.
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POPSBig-brained Animals Evolve Faster a substantial body of evidence has confirmed that animals with larger brains, relative to their body size, have more developed skills for changing their behavior through learning and innovation, facilitating the invasion of novel environments and the use of novel resources. Despite the progress, the role of the brain in the adaptive diversification of animals has remained controversial, mostly due to the difficulties to demonstrate that big-brained animals evolve faster. Now, ecologist Daniel Sol of CREAF-Autonomous University of Barcelona and evolutionary biologist Trevor Price of the University of Chicago, provide evidence for such a role in birds in an article in The American Naturalist. Analyzing body size measures of 7,209 species (representing 75% of all avian species), they found that avian families that have experienced the greatest diversification in body size tend to be those with brains larger than expected for their body size.
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POPSNewly described 'dragon' protein could be key to bird flu cure This unexpected relationship between the two subunits could inspire a number of different therapies or vaccines for H5N1 that rely on muzzling the "dragon's" jaws with another molecule or chemical compound that would block the PB1 subunit's access to the PA site, according to Joachimiak. "If we can put a bit in the dragon's mouth, we can slow or even potentially someday stop the spread of avian flu," he said. "Since we are talking about a relatively small protein surface area, finding a way to inhibit RNA replication in H5N1 seems very feasible."
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POPSVedanthangal - oldest bird sanctuary in India Best of all, villagers close to the sanctuary enjoy a symbiotic relationship with the migratory birds. Some have been quoted as saying they don't want any factories to ever come up in the area, as this will scare away the birds - like the birds go out in search of food, so they too (villagers) will go looking for work elsewhere! Their forefathers also helped identify poachers and had the British issue banning orders!
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POPSCassowaries still feeling cyclone pain 2 years ago, all of the dependent chicks were blown away, presumed dead, They are suffering tuberculosis, and are being hit by cars, dog attacks, after a lack of food in the rainforests has sent them onto the roads, and weakened their immune systems. Moore also says .that around 90% of the flying fox populations have also disappeared
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POPSNew evidence on how birds took flight Their research suggests that flight evolved with critical changes seen in fossilized shoulder bones, among late theropod dinosaurs, and early avians, and describe the fundamental wing stroke as plesiomormhic - meaning an ancestral characteristic. The researchers attached points on ten points on the bird's bodies and digitized the results. They found that the wing stroke fell within a narrow arc of 19 degrees, and the bird shifted it's body to perform it's aerobatics. They draw an analogy with the helicopter, where the agility does not depend on the angle of the rotor blades, but through modifying engine power, and shifting the body using the tail rotor. Reminds me of the helicopter designed by Leonardo da Vinci. then, until the Wright Bros, it seemed people just tried to make 'flying machines' too complicated.
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