Swine flu...in Chicago

5 cases of unconfirmed swine flu in Chicago. Two of them are staff at the U of C hospitals.

The reason why it takes so long to ID swine flu is that there are no local centers for testing - the Centers for Disease Control have to do them out of their labs in Atlanta.

I've talked to a couple of University researchers about the flu. One of them studied (for kicks, apparently) the path of the 1918 flu pandemic in Chicago and U of C in particular - turns out we were hosting a garrison of WWI soldiers at the time. Here they at left, drilling on Stagg Field, the U of C's old Big Ten football stadium (with no little irony, where our library is now.)


Read about what happened to these guys here!

Swine flu

It's a public emergency. I'm sure someone in the University has studied it, so on the Biological Sciences head's advice, I'm going to talk to a professor Olaf Schneewind (with such an excellent name, I'm sure he'll be awesome) for a possible Maroon article.

There are so many unanswered questions: Why hasn't Chicago, with so many people with ties to Mexico, seen an outbreak yet? Is it going to be like the 1918 pandemic, where young, healthy people like myself were the hardest hit? (Although since it killed something like 60 million people, your odds were pretty bad either way.)

More to come.

Love from Space

NASA's just released a series of photos taken by the Cassini spacecraft above Saturn. They are ridiculously awesome:



This is what they have to say about it:
"This natural color mosaic was acquired by the Cassini spacecraft as it soared 39 degrees above the unilluminated side of Saturn's rings. Little light makes its way through the rings to be scattered in Cassini's direction in this viewing geometry, making the rings appear somewhat dark compared to the reflective surface of Saturn (74,898 mi across). The view combines 45 images taken over the course of about two hours, as Cassini scanned across the entire main ring system. The images in this view were obtained on May 9, 2007 at a distance of approximately 700,000 miles from Saturn. (NASA/JPL/SSI)"

Check the rest out here.
Originally linked by the excellent John Scalzi.

Man + Machine at last?

Just finished the latest science feature for the Maroon. This one's about Nicho Hatsopoulos, a Greek statue of a man who works in what he calls "brain-machine interfacing" - essentially, using technology to let people communicate using only their brains. Useful? Sure, but especially for people missing arms and legs or paraplegics: it looks like someday we could be able to fit them with mechanical arms that are controlled with cues from their brain. Like Luke Skywalker's prosthetic hand in Empire Strikes Back, only better.

Read more about it here!.

Haiku you

In order to 1) increase my creative output and 2) alleviate my boredom, today's thoughts are in haiku form.

HAIKU 1
It's hot. You would think
Lake Michigan is warm too;
Trust me, it is not.

HAIKU 2
Ultimate frisbee
Louise is dead; but we won
So it was worth it.

MRSA bacteria breaks out of jail

My article on the MRSA (commonly called Staph A) epidemic, how the first doctor first noticed it in pediatric wards at the University of Chicago Hospitals, and what they did about it is up at the Maroon website.

The doctor who first noticed it is Robert Daum and he was wonderful to interview. He also says he's always looking for volunteers for the MRSA project!