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Pestilence watch: Culling ordered after H5N1 virus discovered in Nepal and India
February 6, 2012
NEPAL
Health workers in Nepal are to cull thousands of chickens following the discovery of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in the southeastern part of the Himalayan country.
“We sent samples for investigation to London after chickens started to die of a mysterious disease in commercial poultry farms,” said Ram Krishna Khatiwada, of the government’s Directorate of Animal Health. “We have received the test reports today that confirms infection of bird flu in poultry farms in Khanar and Ithari of the Sunsari district.”
Bird flu has also been confirmed in the eastern hills of Panchathar district and the tea-producing area of Ilam, Katiwada told AFP, adding that surveillance of farms was to be stepped up and 4000 chickens would be killed in the affected areas.
“There has not been infection to humans in the area so far. Some have complained of itching and vomiting but that is only panic. We will get the situation under control in one or two days.” Nepal’s first reported outbreak of bird flu in poultry was in January 2009 in the eastern part of the country.
The virus reached the capital Kathmandu for the first time in December last year, with health workers culling hundreds of chickens and ducks. If it spreads to humans, bird flu can cause fever, cough, sore throat, pneumonia, respiratory disease and sometimes death. –News
INDIA
In Odisha, about 20,000 birds have been culled in a farm of Central Poultry Development Organization (CPDO) at Bhubaneswar following detection of avian flu H5N1 virus.
Culling operation will resume today in the CPDO farm and the rapid response teams formed for the culling operation plans to cull rest of the 9,000 birds in the farm.
AIR correspondent reports a huge pit has been dug to bury the culled birds and elaborate arrangements have been made for disinfecting the area. Five more rapid response teams have been engaged for creating awareness among the people in Bhubaneswar.
The culling operation was launched after the Odisha government received an advisory from the Centre to eliminate poultry birds at the CPDO farm and three km radius area around it. The culling operation in other areas of Bhubaneswar is likely to be completed in five to six days.
The H5N1 virus was reported at the farm after culling took place at Keranga in Khordha district and Betanati in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha last month. CPDO had sent samples to the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADL) in Bhopal, which confirmed the detection of bird flu virus.
6.7 earthquake strikes: current seismicity in the Philippines as tectonic plate agitation increases
5 February, 2012
PHILIPPINES –
The Philippines, like Japan, sits in one of the most volatile tectonic areas on Earth but unlike Japan, the Philippines is under geological assault from plate movements on all sides. The Philippine plate is squeezed in between the Eurasian plate and the Pacific Plate, but the situation is more complex than that.
The Philippine Islands are surrounded by complex plate boundaries, and the Philippines Plate rather consists of several micro-plates – squeezed in between two convergent plate margins.
The lines with black triangles are active subduction zones with teeth on the over-riding plate. Lines with white triangles are passive subduction zones with teeth on the over-riding plate. The major Philippine fault zone is shown as a black line with arrows showing the movement direction. The volcanoes Pinatubo and Mayon are shown as red dots.
The volcanoes of the Philippines are probably the most deadly in world. Both Pinatubo and Mayon are both capable of producing VEI6 type eruptions.
Because the moon’s tidal influence is so great in the Pacific, volcanologists warned in 2006 that Mount Mayon could explode at any time and that the gravitational pull of a full moon could provide the final push.
A full moon coincided with at least three of Mayon’s nearly 50 explosions over the last four centuries, including the two most recent in 2000 and 2001. The volcanoes are concentrated in a northern volcanic arc above and east of the north-western subduction zone (Manila Trench) and in a southern volcanic arc above and west of the south-eastern subduction zone (Philippine trench).
The Sulu trench also produce a (discontinuous) line of active volcanoes. The Mayon volcano may be associated with the transform fault that connects the eastern and the western subduction zones. This transform fault is offset by the younger north-south directed Philippine Fault. The Eurasian Plate is being subducted along the western side of Luzon and Mindoro at a rate of 3cm/year. The Philippine Fault Zone decouples the northwestward motion of the Pacific with the southwestward motion of the Eurasian Plate. Movements along other active faults are responsible for the present-day high seismicity of the Philippine Archipelago.
A 6.8 (6.7 downgraded by USGS) magnitude earthquake, at a depth at 29 miles, struck off the Philippines on Monday, northeast of Dumaguete, Negros island, at 0349 GMT, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage, and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that based on all available data a Pacific-wide tsunami is not expected.
Shallow 6.0 magnitude earthquake strikes Vanuatu
February 5, 2012
VANUATU –
A 6.0 earthquake struck the South Pacific region of Vanuatu 16:40 UTC, in what has turned out to be the third major earthquake to strike this turbulent tectonic plate boundary since a 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit 3 days ago. Today’s earthquake was very shallow, measuring 4.3 km (2.7 miles) beneath the ocean floor. No tsunami warnings were issued.
Scientists find bacteria resistant to nearly all antibiotics in Antarctica sea water
29 January, 2012
ANTARTICA –
Bacteria that can resist nearly all antibiotics have been found in Antarctic seawater.
Björn Olsen of Uppsala University in Sweden and colleagues took seawater samples between 10 and 300 meters away from Chile’s Antarctic research stations, Bernardo O’Higgins, Arturo Prat and Fildes Bay.
A quarter of the samples of Escherichia coli bacteria carried genes that made an enzyme called ESBL, which can destroy penicillin, cephalosporins and related antibiotics.
Bacteria with these genes can be even more dangerous than the better known superbug MRSA. That’s because the genes sit on a mobile chunk of DNA that can be acquired by many species of bacteria, increasing the incidence of drug-resistant infections such as the E. coli outbreak last year in Germany.
The type of ESBL they found, called CTX-M, is common in bacteria in people, and the Uppsala study found that concentrations of resistant bacteria were higher close to the sewage outfalls from the stations.
Some Antarctic stations started shipping out human feces for incineration after gut bacteria were found nearby.
Chile’s research stations have virtually no sewage treatment in place, says Olsen. Recent work shows the bacteria may hang on to the genes for CTX-M even when no longer exposed to antibiotics, suggesting that superbugs can survive in the wild, with animals acting as a reservoir.
Penguins near the Chilean stations have been checked and are free of ESBL, though Olsen is now looking at the area’s gulls as he has found ESBL-producing bugs in gulls in France. “If these genes are in Antarctica, it’s an indication of how far this [problem] has gone,” he says. –New Scientist
“The environmental overturning of the natural ecology also has the potential to unleash some of nature’s unknown and exotic new viruses. In November of 2009, a research team which included Antonio Alcami, a researcher from the Spanish Research Council, took water samples from Limnopolar Lake on Livingston Island in Antarctica. The researchers were surprised what they discovered was lurking in the icy waters under the ice at the South Pole. “They found nearly 10,000 virus species, including some small DNA viruses that had never before been identified.”’ –The Extinction Protocol, p. 243
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