Spanish influenza pandemic swept the globe in the autumn and winter of 1918-19, and resulted in the deaths of approximately 40 million people. Clinically, epidemiologically , and pathologically, the disease was remarkably uniform, which suggests that similar viruses were causing disease around the world. To assess the homo-geneity of the 1918 pandemic influenza virus, partial hemagglutinin gene...

BACKGROUND The ecology of influenza may be more complex than is usually assumed. For example, despite multiple waves in the influenza pandemic of 1918-19, many people in urban locations were apparently unaffected. Were they unexposed, or protected by pre-existing cross-immunity in the first wave, by acquired immunity in later waves, or were their infections asymptomatic? METHODS We modelled a...

Muzzle flash occurs when the fuel-rich effluent fromthe muzzle of a firearm adequately mixes with oxygen inthe atmosphere and is ignited. The size, character and colorof muzzle flash can vary greatly ranging from virtually novisible light at the muzzle to a very large fireball. The colorcan likewise vary from nearly white to bluish-white to laven-der to orange and re...

537 PERSPECTIVES E dwin G. Krebs, a giant of biomedical science in the 20th century, died on 21 December from congestive heart failure in Seattle at the age of 91. His discovery (with Edmond H. Fischer) of protein phosphorylation as a regulatory mechanism touched all aspects of biomedical science and profoundly infl uenced therapeutic approaches now used in clinical care. Ed's life epitomizes c...

BACKGROUND Molophilus Curtis, 1833 is the most species-rich Limoniidae genus with a total number of 1006 species and subspecies, from which 97 are recorded in the Western-Palaearctic region so far. However new species are still expected from less investigated regions, like the Balkans or the Eastern Europe. NEW INFORMATION In the present article, we desrcibe a new limonid crane fly species, M...

In October 2005, a team of US scientists, headed by Jeffery Taubenberger from the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (Rockville, MD, USA), published the full sequence of the highly virulent strain of influenza virus that caused the Spanish influenza pandemic in the winter of 1918– 1919 and killed up to 50 million people worldwide (Taubenberger et al, 2005). Further work based on the sequenc...

tumours not directly radiated and at a distance from those actually radiated do suffer and disappear when radium is applied. It has been said that these are radiation effects (G. L,. Rohdenburgh and F. D. Bullock, New York Journal of Cancer Research, III, pages 181-191, April, 1918), but there is the law of inverse squares to be considered and the distance from the right side of the chest to th...

BACKGROUND During the 2009 influenza pandemic, individuals over the age of 60 had the lowest incidence of infection with approximately 25% of these people having pre-existing, cross-reactive antibodies to novel 2009 H1N1 influenza isolates. It was proposed that older people had pre-existing antibodies induced by previous 1918-like virus infection(s) that cross-reacted to novel H1N1 strains. M...

Influenza A virus is a major public health threat, killing more than 30,000 per year in the USA alone, sickening millions and inflicting substantial economic costs. Novel influenza virus strains emerge periodically to which humans have little immunity, resulting in devastating pandemics. The 1918 pandemic killed nearly 700,000 Americans and 40 million people worldwide. Pandemics in 1957 and 196...