DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

Federal regulators on Tuesday said that samples of pasteurized milk from around the country had tested positive for inactive remnants of the bird flu virus that has been infecting dairy cows. The viral fragments do not pose a threat to consumers, officials said. “To date, we have seen nothing that would change our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the Food and Drug Administration said in a statement. Over the last month, a bird flu virus known as H5N1 has been detected in more than 30 dairy herds in eight states. The virus is also known to have infected one farmworker, whose only symptom was pink eye.

Persons: “ Organizations: and Drug Administration, Agriculture Department

☆ U.S. Life Expectancy Creeps Up as Covid Deaths Fall
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-29 | by ( Emily Anthes | More About Emily Anthes | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The rise represents a slow and partial recovery for the country, which tallied more than 1.1 million Covid-19 deaths and lost 2.4 years in life expectancy between 2019 and 2021. In 2022, life expectancy at birth was 77.5 years, compared with 76.4 years in 2021. A fall in Covid-19 deaths accounts for more than 80 percent of that increase. In 2019, before the pandemic, life expectancy at birth was 78.8. Drops in deaths from heart disease, unintentional injuries (a category that includes traffic deaths and drug overdoses), cancer and homicide also contributed to the rise in life expectancy, the C.D.C.

Organizations: Centers for Disease Control Locations: United States, Covid

☆ Could a Drug Give Your Pet More Dog Years?
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-28 | by ( Emily Anthes | More About Emily Anthes | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The life of a pet dog follows a predictable trajectory. “When you adopt a dog, you’re adopting future heartbreak,” said Emilie Adams, a New Yorker who owns three Rhodesian Ridgebacks. On Tuesday, the biotech company Loyal announced that it had moved one step closer to bringing one such drug to market. “The data you provided are sufficient to show that there is a reasonable expectation of effectiveness,” an official at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration informed the company in a recent letter. (Loyal provided a copy of the letter to The Times.)

Persons: ”, Emilie Adams, “ Organizations: New Yorker, Rhodesian, Loyal, U.S . Food, Drug Administration, Times Locations: New, U.S

☆ To Knock an Elephant Off Balance, Bring Out a Giant Blindfold
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-26 | by ( Emily Anthes | More About Emily Anthes | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“The bigger you are, the harder you fall,” said John Hutchinson, an expert on large animal locomotion at the Royal Veterinary College in Britain. “If an elephant falls, it’s in big trouble.”But scientists knew little about how elephants maintain their stability as they lumber across the landscape. A new study, published in Biology Letters on Wednesday in Britain, suggests that visual feedback helps elephants time their strides. “Our elephants were going slowly, very slowly, a really slow walk,” said Dr. Hutchinson, a co-author of the study. Otherwise, I would never have done the experiment.”Studies have shown that visual feedback helps humans fine-tune their steps.

Persons: ”, John Hutchinson, it’s, Hutchinson Organizations: Royal Veterinary College, Hollywood Locations: Britain

☆ We Asked Readers to Spend the Summer Watching Birds. Here’s What Happened.
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-20 | by ( Emily Anthes | More About Emily Anthes | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

One Saturday morning in June, Amy Simmons spotted some sparrows flitting around a coastal marsh in Maine. She and her two companions, all dedicated bird-watchers, quickly identified one of the foraging birds as a Nelson’s sparrow, a small, round bird with a yellow stripe over its eye. The stripe over this sparrow’s eye had a more saturated, orange tint, and its breast was speckled with black and white. It was a saltmarsh sparrow, a species threatened by sea level rise. Without significant conservation action, climate change could render the species extinct by the middle of this century, some scientists predict.

Persons: Amy Simmons, ”, Simmons, Ms Organizations: National Audubon Society, Cornell, of Ornithology Locations: Maine

☆ Bird Flu Raced Through South America. Antarctica Could Be Next.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-30 | by ( Emily Anthes | More About Emily Anthes | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Last fall, the virus, known as H5N1, finally arrived in South America. It raced quickly down the Pacific coast and killed wild birds and marine mammals in staggering numbers. “The negative impact of this virus on Antarctic wildlife could be immense — likely worse than that on South American wildlife,” the report warns. More than 100 million birds breed in Antarctica and on the islands nearby, and many marine mammals swim in the surrounding waters. Some of those species, including the distinctive emperor penguin and Antarctic fur seal, crowd together in large colonies.

Persons: OFFLU, ”, Ralph Vanstreels, Davis Organizations: University of California Locations: Europe, Africa, Asia, United States, South America, Peru, Chile, Antarctica, Australia, American

When Michelle Reininger went to bed on Thursday, June 15, she wasn’t worried about the weather. But in the middle of the night, an emergency alert blared on her phone: a severe thunderstorm warning. Ms. Reininger dressed quickly in the dark. “Everywhere I went, there was a tree across the road or power lines down,” Ms. Reininger said. She and her colleagues, who were also making their way to work, soon discovered that a tree was blocking the main road to the sanctuary.

Persons: Michelle Reininger, Reininger, ” Ms Locations: Chimp Haven

☆ A Half-Million Americans May Have Tick-Linked Meat Allergy, C.D.C. Says
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-27 | by ( Emily Anthes | More About Emily Anthes | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Lone star ticks, which scientists believe are the primary culprits of the disease in the United States, can transmit the sugar to people through a bite. Even patients who have the syndrome may not feel sick every time they eat meat. “It’s consistently inconsistent,” Dr. Salzer said. Until August 2021, a single commercial lab did nearly all of this antibody testing in the United States. In one of the new studies, researchers reviewed the results of the antibody tests performed at this lab from 2017 to 2022.

Persons: Salzer, Maya Jerath, Louis, ‘, ’ ”, Jerath, it’s, ”, “ It’s Organizations: Washington University Locations: St, United States

It was showtime at the youth swine exhibition, and the pig barn was bustling. The competitors, ages 3 to 21, were practicing their walks for the show ring and brushing pig bristles into place. As he slipped into one pen, a pig tried to nose its way out, then started nibbling his shoelaces. Bowman prefers not to enter the pens, he said, as he wiped gauze across the animal’s nose. He soon spotted a more appealing subject: a pig sticking its nose out from between the bars of its enclosure.

Persons: Andrew Bowman, Bowman, ” Organizations: showtime, Ohio State University Locations: New Lexington , Ohio, Wuhan, China

☆ ‘They’re Outsmarting Us’: Birds Build Nests From Anti-Bird Spikes
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-13 | by ( Emily Anthes | More About Emily Anthes | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The crows seemed to use the spikes differently, turning the sharp pins toward the interior of the nest. Although the idea remains unproven, positioning the spikes this way might provide the nests with more structural support, Mr. Hiemstra speculated. It is not entirely clear whether the birds are simply using the spikes because they are available — in the urban wild, they might be easier to come by than thorny branches — or whether they might be even better suited for the job than natural materials are. But the use of artificial nesting materials is common across the avian universe, according to a new review of the scientific literature by Dr. Mainwaring and his colleagues, which was published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B on Monday. They found reports of tens of thousands of nests — built by 176 different bird species, on every continent except for Antarctica — that contained artificial materials, including plastic bags, cloth straps, fishing line, paper towels, dental floss, rubber bands and cigarette butts.

Persons: Hiemstra, Mainwaring Organizations: Royal Society

☆ Coronavirus Probably Spread Widely in Deer and Perhaps Back to People, U.S.D.A. Says
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-11 | by ( Emily Anthes | More About Emily Anthes | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Indeed, the new study confirms prior reports that some coronavirus variants, including Alpha and Gamma, continued to circulate in deer even after they became rare in people. They found multiple versions of the virus in deer, including the Alpha, Gamma, Delta and Omicron variants. Then, the scientists compared the viral samples isolated from deer with those from human patients and mapped the evolutionary relationships between them. They concluded that the virus moved from humans to deer at least 109 times and that deer-to-deer transmission often followed. Many questions remain, including precisely how people are passing the virus to deer, and the role that the animals might play in sustaining the virus in the wild.

Persons: APHIS Organizations: Alpha, Gamma, Plant Health, Service, D.C, Nature Communications, APHIS, Centers for Disease Control, University of Missouri Locations: ., Washington, North Carolina and Massachusetts

☆ ‘The Risk Is Staggering,’ Report Says of Disease From U.S. Animal Industries
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-06 | by ( Emily Anthes | More About Emily Anthes | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The United States is home to an enormous array of animal industries — including industrial agriculture, fur farming and the exotic pet trade — that pose a significant risk of creating infectious disease outbreaks in humans, according to a new report by experts at Harvard Law School and New York University. Moreover, the nation “has no comprehensive strategy” to mitigate the dangers posed by these practices, many of which operate with little regulation and out of public view, the authors concluded. “The risk is staggering, because our use of animals is staggering,” said Ann Linder, the report’s lead author and an associate director at Harvard’s animal law and policy program. “And we don’t even really understand where that risk is.”Zoonotic diseases, or those that spread from animals to humans, account for roughly 60 percent of all known infectious diseases and 75 percent of new and emerging ones, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although the exact origins of the Covid-19 pandemic remain murky, the possibility that the coronavirus might have first jumped into humans at a live animal market in Wuhan, China, prompted calls to shut down these so-called wet markets, especially in Asia.

Persons: “, ”, Ann Linder Organizations: Harvard Law School, New York University, Centers for Disease Control Locations: States, Wuhan, China, Asia

Search resuls for: "More About Emily Anthes"

12 mentions found