Worldwide Health Groups Issue MERS Updates

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, or MERS-CoV; aka Novel Virus) has been quietly spreading on the Arabian Peninsula. There have been nearly a hundred confirmed cases so far, half fatal. (See Deadly New Virus Spreads Through Human Contact)

MERS Coronavirus
Photo from HO-US National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Several health organizations, including The Center for Disease Controls (CDC), The World Health Organization (WHO) and The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) have issued new guidelines or updated information regarding the dangerous MERS virus which has killed 45 people in the Arabian Peninsula and southern Europe, with the majority of deaths in Saudi Arabia.

Increased Testing for MERS Recommended:
The CDC updated its advice to health professionals, advising them to increase testing for MERS, including in those who meet specific epidemiological and clinical criteria even if those illnesses could be explained by another cause. They also recommend testing for the virus in clusters of severe acute respiratory illnesses, even when there is no apparent link to other MERS infections.

Nations Watch for Outbreaks as Ramadan Pilgrims Return From Saudi Arabia:
To date, 94 cases have been laboratory confirmed, with an additional sixteen unconfirmed.The WHO reports that new infections are still occurring in the Arabian Peninsula but there have been no known exported cases for several months. They urge vigilance however, as thousands of Ramadan pilgrims have recently returned from Saudi Arabia. Ramadan ended on August 8.

Update 08/16/2013:
In a possibly ominous sign, a forty year old man in Mumbai, India is suspected of contracting the MERS virus after returning to India from 35 days in Saudi Arabia. He is currently quarantined at Kasturba Hospital in Chinchpokli while testing for the virus is being conducted. 

Update: 08/18/2013: The suspected case from India (above) has tested negative for MERS. He is responding well to treatment and will be released soon. 

Majority of Saudi Cases Spread Through Human Contact:
In response to a recent report that camels may be spreading the virus, the ECDC issued a statement cautioning that no clear link has been found. In fact, most of those infected had no known contact with camels or other animals.

Much of the spread of the disease appears to be through human contact. According to this article from the New England Journal of Medicine, 21 of 23 confirmed cases in Saudi Arabia were caused by person to person contact in three different health care facilities and among family care givers.

See MERS Watch for updated information on this topic.

Deadly New Virus Spreads Through Human Contact

UPDATE: August 10, 2013 - Camels Suspected of Spreading the Deadly Virus

• Camels are suspected to be carriers of Middle East Respitory Syndrome (MERS, previously called Novel Coronavirus) and may be responsible for some human infections.
• MERS has sickened at least 94 people worldwide and claimed 46 lives.

MERS-CoV virus (Wikipedia article)

According to this BBC report, infected camels may be capable of passing the virus to humans. Blood samples were taken from livestock worldwide. Antibodies to the virus were discovered in camels from Oman and Spain, suggesting the virus has become widespread in that region. Antibodies were not found in sheep, goats, cattle or other animals.

Original Article:

A previously unknown virus, nicknamed the 'Novel Coronavirus' has been blamed for the deaths of eight people and is capable of being transmitted directly through person to person contact.

The new virus, known as  HCoV-EMC, is from a family of coronaviruses which are responsible for the common cold and the SARS virus which killed more than 800 people worldwide during an outbreak in 2002 and 2003. It is genetically related to a type found in bats and the unusual virus seems to have mutated to a form which is capable of not only infecting humans, but alarmingly, can be spread from human contact alone.

The international medical community has been aware of the new illness since last year when it broke out in the middle east. At that time, eleven cases were reported including five deaths. Until now, it was unclear if the outbreak clusters were due to personal transmission or if they were all exposed to the same non-human source.

Now, the death of a man in Britain has ended all doubt. The BBC has reported the first cases of transmission of the Novel Coronavirus through close contact with an infected person. An ill man returning from Pakistan infected two of his sons. One later died, possibly complicated by a previous medical condition.

Officials in the UK have located all fellow passengers on the man's flight from Pakistan and are checking to see if any of those may have also been infected.

Currently there are only 14 known cases worldwide, with limited and clustered outbreaks reported in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and the United Kingdom. Eight of those victims have died.

Most of those sickened experienced severe lower respiratory symptoms with one instance of a mild infection where the victim recovered without medical treatment.

There are no travel restrictions currently in place, but the Center for Disease Control (CDC) is asking health professionals to report cases of acute respiratory infection in persons who have travelled to the Arabian Peninsula within the previous 10 days, or anyone who may have had close contact with persons who have recently returned from the Arabian Peninsula or neighbouring countries. More information can be found in this FAQ from the CDC.

See MERS Watch for updated information on this topic.

Image: coronaviruses 004 lores.jpg: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coronaviruses_004_lores.jpg 

Mars Science Lab 'Curiosity' Will Search for Signs of Life

'Curiosity' Rover will Search for Signs of Life

NASA is preparing to launch another rover mission to Mars on November 25, 2011. The goal of this mission will be to search for signs of past life on the Red Planet.

According to NASA's website,

"...Curiosity has 10 science instruments to search for evidence about whether Mars had environments favorable for microbial life, including the chemical ingredients for life."

Dubbed 'Curiosity', this seven foot tall rover is twice as big as previous mars' rovers and weighs over a ton. It carries more than ten times the mass of scientific equipment than the Spirit and Opportunity rovers launched in 2004.

Spectacular Mars sunset

Propelled by an Atlas V rocket, the ambitious mission will last two years and focus on the Gale crater. Also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, this rover will carry more scientific equipment than has ever been sent to another planet.

Curiosity will attempt a first ever, multi-stage precision landing. It will use a combination of a supersonic parachute deployed at approximately 10 km (6.2 miles) to slow decent of the spacecraft, eight directional rocket thrusters which will allow controllers to adapt to the environment and steer the craft towards the landing area. Finally, a 'sky crane' will gently lower the rover to the planet surface.

Mars Gale Crater

Gale crater is believed to be about three and a half billion years old and 154 km (more than 95 miles) in diameter. This location was chosen for the rich combination of morphologic and mineralogical evidence of water in Mars' past. It contains minerals that are conducive to fossil preservation and the crater provides a surface that Curiosity can navigate safely. The choice was designed to "...identify a particular geologic environment, or set of environments, that would support microbial life."

This mission comes on the heels of an attempt by Russian scientists to land a probe on one of Mars' moons, Phobos, and return samples to Earth. The spacecraft is currently trapped in low Earth orbit and scientists are struggling to restart booster engines before it falls back to Earth containing tons of unspent rocket fuel.

Watch the launch live plus other special events, documentaries, news conferences and much more at NASA TV.

images: NASA / JPL-Caltech
rover: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html
gale crater: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gale_crater.jpg
Martian sunset: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/MarsSunset.jpg/998px-MarsSunset.jpg

First published as Mars Science Lab 'Curiosity' Will Search for Signs of Life

Crippled Russian Spacecraft Carries Toxic Payload

Russian spacecraft Phobos-Grunt

Russian scientists are struggling to restart engines in the Phobos-Ground Probe  which failed to leave orbit following launch on November 8, 2011. The ship, containing tons of dangerous rocket fuel, could drop out of orbit and fall to earth as soon as a few days from now or could linger in decaying orbit until around Christmas next month.

Tons of unspent rocket fuel and an uncontrolled re-entry could create a very dangerous combination depending on where the craft comes down and the state of the fuel.

If the fuel does not freeze, but remains liquid, it should burn up harmlessly before it reaches the ground. But if the toxic mixture freezes, it could survive re-entry and strike the Earth intact. According to James Oberg, formally with NASA and now a space consultant,

“About seven tons (6.4 tonnes) of nitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine, which could freeze before ultimately entering, will make it the most toxic falling satellite ever”

Signs of trouble began when Russian scientists lost contact with the probe and requested amateur astronomers worldwide to report any sightings. The craft was spotted by South American astronomers trapped in a low orbit, trailed by its' failed booster engines.

Software engineers have attempted upgrades, bug fixes and reboots of the system, but according to this report, they have so far been unable to communicate with the craft and hope is fading that a solution will be found before the batteries fail.

Mars Moon Phobos

 Engineers are hoping that if the spacecraft falls back to Earth, it will land in the ocean. Compared to the six ton UARS Satellite, which dropped out of orbit in September, 2011, this failed spacecraft and booster engines weighs over fourteen tons, most of which is unspent fuel.

The ship was headed for Mars moon Phobos on an ambitious mission  to return to Earth next year with about seven ounces of soil samples from the Martian moon. Instead, this is the just latest and most dangerous, in a very long string of failed missions to Mars by the Russian Federal Space Agency.

Article first published as Crippled Russian Spacecraft Carries Toxic Payload on Technorati.

images:
phobos ground probe: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cebit_2011-fobos-grunt_together_with_upper_stage.jpg
phobos: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phobos_PIA10369.jpg 

Flurry of Earthquake 'Anomolies' Caused by Fracking?

Seismograph

Update: March 9, 2012:
A series of Ohio earthquakes were caused by fracking according to State officials. Tough new laws will regulate drilling and disposal of waste.*

The 5.6 earthquake which struck Oklahoma in late 2011 was the latest in a string of 'rare' earthquakes shaking the normally geologically quiet interior or North America.

These previously unusual events are raising fresh concerns that the use of fracking and the disposal of fracking fluids may be causing the quakes.

Fracking is the fracturing of layers of rock with high pressure fluids to release pockets of trapped gas and oil. Increases in energy prices and Bush era deregulation has led to a wide use of this technique with thousands of new wells brought on line in the past few years.

This proliferation in fracking has coincided with numerous earthquakes in unusual locations. Recent studies indicate that culprit may actually be the disposal wells. Fracking produces lots of waste fluid which is collected and injected at high pressures into disposal wells.

Earthquakes caused by this type of wells is not the paranoid imaginings of environmental zealots. In this recent report, the Oklahoma Geological Survey studied a swarm of earthquakes in Garvin County, OK in January of this year, which began within hours of a new and deep hydro-fracturing project nearby.
The Geological Survey stopped short of definitively blaming the earthquakes on the fracking operation, but noted

"...The strong correlation in time and space as well as a reasonable fit to a physical model suggest that there is a possibility these earthquakes were induced by hydraulic-fracturing."

Typically, the report concludes that it is impossible to say definitely if the quakes were caused by fracking, but other locations hit by anomalous quakes are satisfied they have enough proof.

In June of this year, Cuadrilla Resources was forced to suspend its' fracking operation after it admitted it caused a swarm of earthquakes in normally seismically peaceful northwest England.

February, 2011: Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission issued an emergency moratorium on new injection wells due to a 4.7 magnitude quake as part of a suspicious swarm of earthquakes in the area.

In August of 2009, Chesapeake, one of the largest oil and gas exploration companies in the area, was forced to shut down two wells in the Dallas/Fort Worth area after they were linked to a swarm of earthquakes.

In other events, fracking was suspected, but no action taken:

Drilling Rig

In October 2011, a rare 4.8 magnitude quake hit in near San Antonio, Texas. This occurred in an area which has been heavily drilled and fracked.

In August of 2011, a rare 5.8 quake hits Virginia and is felt all over the east coast. Speculation ensues that dramatically increased fracking in the area may have triggered this rare event.

The same day, a southern Colorado 5.3 earthquake occurred in the same area as a swarm of possible fracking induced quakes investigated in 2001 by the USGS. Three months before the August 2011 quake, the EPA announced plans to study the impacts of fracking on drinking water in that area.

No one knows the impact of the large-scale fracturing of the earth's crust or the ramifications of high pressure injection of waste fluids deep underground. The evidence is mounting of a direct connection between these practices and unusual earthquake activity, but it may be impossible to scientifically prove.

These strange quakes have caused quite a bit of damage but no deaths so far. Energy companies continue to deny any connection between earthquakes and fracking or disposal of fracking fluids. The evidence, however, continues to pile up.

How many 'rare' earthquakes does it take before we acknowledge a pattern? And what price are we willing to pay, in lives and property, for the promise of 'cheap' energy?

*Update: March 09, 2012:
A series of Ohio earthquakes were caused by fracking according to State officials. Tough new laws will regulate drilling and disposal of waste.

In this report, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources said:

"After investigating all available geological formation and well activity data, ODNR regulators and geologists found a number of co-occurring circumstances strongly indicating the Youngstown area earthquakes were induced," state officials stated. "Specifically, evidence gathered by state officials suggests fluid from the Northstar 1 disposal well intersected an unmapped fault in a near-failure state of stress causing movement along that fault."

Article first published as Flurry of Earthquake 'Anomolies' Caused by Fracking? on Technorati.

images:
drill rig: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drilling_for_gas_and_oil_in_Dalby_Forest_February_2007_-_geograph.org.uk_-_343560.jpghttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki
seismograph: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kinemetrics_seismograph.jpg

What Went Wrong at Fukishima? 24 Hours to Meltdown

Reactor 3 Explodes at Fukishima

A report by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) takes a close look at what went wrong at the Fukishima Nuclear Power Plant following the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
 
With billions of dollars in research and technology invested in nuclear energy, the report identified six common-sense and seemly obvious lessons which could have minimized or prevented the impending meltdown.

A massive 9.0 quake struck at 2:46 pm on March 11, 2011 off the east coast of Japan. At the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), Unit numbers 1,2 and 3 of the six reactors were operating. #4, 5 and 6 were down for scheduled maintenance. The quake caused the plant to perform a routine auto-shutdown without incident.

Power outages caused by quake were widespread. Within 10 seconds, twelve diesel generators activated to power water pumps for cooling to the fuel rods. So far, all emergency procedures are working as planned.

At 2:52 pm Unit 1 using a non-electrical isolation condenser (IC) backup cooling system was cooling the reactor too quickly and a plant supervisor shut it down, per normal procedure.

Tsunami alerts predicted a 3 meter (9.8ft) high wave would strike the Fukushima prefecture. The Dai-ichi Plant is 10 meters above sea level (33 ft). For safety, non-essential personnel began evacuating plant.

The first wave struck at 3:27. With a second set of much bigger waves arriving at 3:35 pm. It has been approximately fifty minutes since the quake.

The second huge wave topped seawalls and surged through plant. It destroyed heat removal seawater pumps and inundated the control rooms controlling valves, pumps and other crucial equipment. Later, TEPCO employees would estimate the killer wave at 14 meters high (46 ft) from water stains on the walls.

Six generators located in basements were drowned and five more shut down when control rooms were flooded. Only one generator serving reactors 5 and 6, not located in a basement, continued operating. This lone functioning generator helped units 5 and 6 survive the disaster while the other reactors spiraled out of control.

Lessons from Fukishima

Even back up batteries failed and Reactor 1 suffered a complete power failure. The control room went dark and instrument panels stopped functioning. Cooling system pumps failed and the water which was supposed to be cooling radioactive fuel rods began to boil. Steam built inside the reactor building. Without working gauges and instruments, operators were not sure of how much water was left to cool the rods.

The non-electrical IC cooling system serving Reactor 1 had been shut down early in the crisis, due to it working too well. Now, without power,  plant operators were unable to reopen the valves, even manually.

Operators struggled to regain power at the plant.  They scavenged batteries out of cars in the parking lot and called out a small fleet of power-generating trucks. However,  the earthquake and tsunami ruined roads and mass evacuations clogged highways and these trucks promptly became stuck in traffic.

At 4:36 TEPCO finally officially alerted the Japanese government of the problem at Reactor 1.

Around 9 pm and working by flashlight, operators ingeniously powered up a few important instrument panels using the scavenged car batteries and were relieved to see that the water cooling the fuel rods in Reactor 1 seemed to holding up so far. Water levels were down, but the rods were not exposed.

Later, company analysis showed the instruments were incorrect. The water level had dropped so low the rods were completely exposed. Temperatures had topped 1300 °C (2372 °F) and the meltdown had already begun.

Around midnight, more instruments were brought online and showed that dangerous pressure inside the containment vessel had already exceeded its' maximum design and an explosion was a serious risk.

Teams struggled through the night and next day to vent the explosive pressure in the containment vessel and cool the rods. Power trucks finally arrived and prepared to restart pumps cooling the crippled reactor.

Fire hoses poured on fresh water until tanks were empty, then in desperation started using highly corrosive sea water. This was an tacit admission that saving the plant was no longer an option and now the focus was on preventing a massive nuclear disaster.

Unknown to operators, the meltdown was proceeding. Superheated fuel rods had begun to melt through the steel floor of the pressure vessel. Pressure built inside the reactor as residents within a 10 km area around the plant (6.2 miles) were evacuated.

Attempts to release the pressure from hydrogen gas inside the reactor continued but were not enough to prevent a catastrophic explosion almost exactly 24 hours after the tsunami hit the plant.

The explosion cut off power from the trucks and severed the fire hoses. The flow of cooling water ceased as radiation levels climbed and plant operators scrambled for safety.

The disaster continued to spiral out of control. The plant was now a radioactive hot spot and choked with debris from the tsunami and explosion of reactor 1. Workers struggled to cool Reactors 2 and 3, but without power or pumps, Reactor 3 exploded on March 14, followed by a possible explosion inside number two later that day. Later, another explosion tore the roof off building four.

As this slow-motion catastrophe unfolded, workers fought gallantly to contain it but efforts were continually hampered by the lack of power which caused pumps to fail and rendered safety controls useless. Japanese officials later admitted that three reactors suffered full meltdowns.

Certainly, lessons will be learned from this disaster. Nuclear Power Plant designers worldwide will be studying Fukishima for years to come and will develop better system designs and disaster plans.

But looking at how events unfolded, it was mainly a lack of planning in the common-sense, low tech processes which brought Fukishima to its' knees.

Article first published as What Went Wrong at Fukishima? 24 Hours to Meltdown on Technorati. 

Images:
Reactor 3 image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fukushima_I_by_Digital_Globe.jpg
Lessons background image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bagalute/5127578547/sizes/m/in/photostream/  

Millions of Tons of Tsunami Refuse Could Reach US Coast

 First Published as "Millions of Tons of Tsunami Refuse Could Reach US Coast" on Technorati

image: JAMSTEC, IPRS, NOAA, NASA

Millions of tons of debris from the massive 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in March, 2011 is making its way across the Pacific Ocean and will  eventually reach the west coast of the United States.

Following the record quake, crushing tsunami waves reached 133 ft (40.5 meters) in height and traveled up to six miles (10 km) inland. Nearly twenty thousand people were killed or have gone missing.
'
When the massive waves retreated, they pulled out to sea millions of tons of demolished houses, cars, furniture and the remnants of thousands of lives. Some of these items will sink as they move across the ocean, but many will not.

A staggering five to twenty million tons of refuse, containing everything from house parts, appliances and the minutia of peoples' lives will likely begin to arrive at Midway Islands, which lies between Japan and Hawaii, sometime this winter. The debris plume is estimated to be two thousand miles long and a thousand miles long.

Debris Plume image: US Navy

The mass of floating refuse will reach Hawaii in the winter or spring of 2013 and finally wash ashore in 2014 along the beaches of North America's west coast from British Columbia and Alaska through Washington, Oregon and California. It is not expected to contain radioactive material.

This prediction is the result of a model ( .pdf) developed by Nikolai Maximenko, a senior researcher at the International Pacific Research Center in Hawaii. He studied thirty years of ocean currents using data from thousands of buoys dotting the ocean. Recently a Russian ship passing between Honolulu and Vladivostock, Russia spotted the Japanese debris field just where Maximenko's model predicted it would be.  You can view an animation of the projected path here.

Whatever remains of this giant plume of trash and debris will eventually make its' way to the infamous 'North Pacific Garbage Patch' a giant vortex of mostly chemical and plastic garbage from the US and Japan which accumulates and is trapped by ocean currents in a huge area of the Pacific Ocean.

This marine garbage collection point was predicted in 1988 by NOAA and verified in 1997. Estimates of size vary greatly but range from  270,000 sq mi (700,000 square kilometres) to more than 5,800,000 sq mi (15,000,000 square kilometers). There is also a garbage patch accumulating in the Atlantic.

Breakthrough Drug May Kill All Viruses

Article first published as Breakthrough Drug May Kill All Viruses on Technorati.

Influenza Virus - cdc.gov

Researchers at MIT have made a remarkable breakthrough. They have developed a new anti-viral drug that appears to kill every virus they have tried it against, without harming healthy cells or the patient.

They have successfully tested it against a wide range of viral ailments including the common cold, polio and Ebola.

The new drug is called DRACO (Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) Activated Caspase Oligomerizer) and works by inducing infected cells to kill themselves before the virus can spread.

When viruses invade cells they produce long strands of dsRNA (double strand RNA) which are not normally produced in people or animals. These unusual dsRNA strands are only found in virus-infected cells.

MIT researcher Todd Rider had the novel idea to combine two drugs: One identifies and attaches itself to these distinctive dsRNA strands and the other tricks the cell to 'commit suicide' (apoptosis). This is a normally occurring bodily defense against damaged cells which prevents cancers, auto immune and inflammatory diseases. In fact the average adult body destroys more than 50 billion damaged cells each day.

This combination of therapies, identifying infected cells and inducing them to kill themselves has produced a highly effective and wide spectrum drug that should, theoretically, work against all viruses.

So far it has been effective against all fifteen different viruses they have tried it on. Testing on mice showed DRACO totally cleared the H1N1 virus, cause of the 'swine flu' outbreak in 2009.

Rapid deployment of effective anti-viral drugs, even for newly discovered viruses, can be the difference between a catastrophic pandemic, like the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak that killed 50 million worldwide and a minor outbreak, quickly  contained and extinguished.

There are a few anti-viral drugs available today. They tend to be targeted to very specific viruses and are vulnerable to resistance through rapid generic mutations, common in viruses.

Viruses have been linked to serious and chronic medical conditions such as Type 1 diabetes and atherosclerosis, a leading cause of heart attacks.

DRACO may revolutionize medical treatment for viral infections, much as antibiotics led to treatment of routine bacterial infections which were often fatal a century ago. In fact, life expectancy increased by eight years between 1944 and 1972, largely due to the availability of antibiotics.

Finally, real hope exists for the victims of viral infections, from the common cold to AIDS.

Press Announcement is here and technical details can be found here.