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	<title>Mystery Rays from Outer Space</title>
	<link>http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays</link>
	<description>Meddling with things mankind is not meant to understand.  Also, pictures of my kids</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:14:02 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<item>
		<title>Yellow fever, stasis, and diversification</title>
		<description><![CDATA[





&#8220;Episode de la fièvre jaune&#8221;



By analyzing hepatitis C virus genome sequences, you can trace the virus&#8217;s history through its spread by the slave trade, and linked 19th-century health models in different countries to viral spread and transmission.  Similarly, by looking at leprosy DNA, you can track its spread along the Silk Road and along [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2010/03/12/yellow-fever-stasis-and-diversification/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Vaccinia virus in Brazil: What a long, strange trip</title>
		<description><![CDATA[





Krishna, milking a cow 



Vaccinia virus is a widespread virus whose natural host remains unknown.  It turns out to be pretty good at jumping across species.
Vaccinia, of course, is the vaccine against smallpox.  Even though smallpox is eliminated in the wild,1 vaccinia is still very widely used in research and even, to some extent, in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2010/03/10/vaccinia-virus-in-brazil-what-a-long-strange-trip/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Blowing out the candles</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Our cells die all the time, in vast numbers.  Cells are programmed to die when all kinds of things happen: They may have reached the end of their productive life (as with cells of the gut or skin); they may detect damage to their DNA (as in cancer); or they may have detected viral infection. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2010/03/04/blowing-out-the-candles/</link>
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		<title>Frogs and jumping viruses</title>
		<description><![CDATA[





&#8220;Batrachia&#8221;, by Ernst Haeckel
(Kunstformen der Natur, 1904)



There&#8217;s a constant viral assault on us humans, as there is on just about all other species. We as a species have to contend not only with the vast pool of human pathogens, those viruses that constantly circulate among humanity; but also with the continual probes on our defenses [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2010/03/02/frogs-and-jumping-viruses/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The deadliest, most awe-inspiring of the plagues</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Most of us don&#8217;t think much about yellow fever nowadays.  There are still a couple hundred thousand cases, and some 30,000 deaths, each year, but almost none are in the first world. Out of sight, out of mind.
But this indifference is new. Until the beginning of the 20th century, yellow fever ran rampant, and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2010/02/24/the-deadliest-most-awe-inspiring-of-the-plagues/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Rabbits, virulence, history, and connections</title>
		<description><![CDATA[





Man chasing rabbit
(From &#8220;Fliegende Blätter&#8221;, Munich, 1889)




Everyone knows about rabbits in Australia.  Introduced in the mid-1800s, they multiplied ridiculously and ate their way across the country, leaving barren devastation behind them.
Myxomavirus, a poxvirus that originated in South America, was introduced in the early 1950s and temporarily controlled the rabbit population, cutting their numbers by [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2010/02/22/rabbits-virulence-history-and-connections/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>On predictability of influenza pandemics</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
Despite the fact that the recent pandemic was the best studied and recorded to date, the knowledge gained will probably have little predictive value for the next pandemic, either in qualitative or quantitative terms.

&#8211;Communicable Diseases and Epidemics
Martin M. Kaplan
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June 1960
Kaplan  was referring to the 1957-58 influenza pandemic, but the sentence [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2010/02/16/on-predictability-of-influenza-pandemics/</link>
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		<title>How many Americans are immune to H1N1?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Edit: I&#8217;ve updated the table to reflect the CDC&#8217;s numbers for age distribution of infection, which I didn&#8217;t see first time around.  Thanks to Marcello Pucciarelli for the link.  The original version of this post, containing my guesswork on the distribution, is still available here. Using the more accurate numbers has very little effect on [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2010/02/13/how-many-americans-are-immune-to-h1n1/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Leprosy and the Silk Road</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Leprosy is a fascinating disease for many reasons.  Historical, because, well, it&#8217;s leprosy.  Genetic, because the bacterium is apparently derived from a single clone that infected humans some 4000 years ago,1 and that has undergone &#8220;massive gene decay&#8221; in the process of becoming an obligate pathogen:

Thus, since diverging from the last common mycobacterial ancestor, the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2010/02/12/leprosy-and-the-silk-road/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>A scarifying story</title>
		<description><![CDATA[





Sopona, the Yoruba god of smallpox



A while ago I listed a number of reasons why smallpox was eradicated, whereas other diseases haven&#8217;t been (yet).  One of the reasons was that the vaccine against smallpox1 is so effective. Vaccinia immunization induces immunity for an extraordinarily long time — memory immune responses have been shown for [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2010/02/10/a-scarifying-story/</link>
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