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31 January 2001
The year 2000 will be remembered for the economic and political consequences of a food-borne epidemic in cattle, later suspected
and finally confirmed to possess zoonotic potential. Around Christmas, Germany announced that it would have beef products
banned from shop shelves across the country because of the threat of BSE. The removal of German beef products is part of a
general recall of such products across Europe.
31 January 2001
Research in recent years has accumulated evidence that vaccination - the financial mainstay of many a companion animal practice
- may not be as innocuous as thought before. Injection-site fibrosarcoma in cats is a point in case. Four years ago, a Vaccine-Associated
Feline Sarcoma Task Force was established, consisting of representatives from the American Veterinary Medical Association,
American Animal Hospital Association, Veterinary Cancer Society, American Association of Feline Practitioners, U.S. Department
of Agriculture, Animal Health Institute and the Cornell Feline Health Center.
31 January 2001
The New England Journal of Medicine recently relayed some encouraging treatment findings about a typically fatal disease,
advanced kidney cancer. Indeed, a recent phase I/II study revealed that blood stem cell transplants from healthy siblings
may prove far more effective than current first-line treatments. Richard Childs of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
and his colleagues offered the stem cell intervention to 19 patients with treatment-resistant metastatic renal cell carcinoma.
31 January 2001
It has now been proven by scientists from the National Influenza Center, Institute of Virology, Erasmus University of Rotterdam,
the Netherlands that influenza type B virus can infect animals other than man. In an article published in Science, researchers
in the Netherlands say they have isolated an influenza B virus from a harbor seal and shown, by sequence analysis and serology,
that the virus is closely related to strains of influenza B virus that circulated in humans four to five years ago.
31 January 2001
The history of life documented in the fossil record shows that the evolution of complex organisms such as animals and plants
has involved marked changes in morphology, and the appearance of new features. However, evolutionary change occurs not by
the direct transformation of adult ancestors into adult descendants but rather when developmental processes produce the features
of each generation in an evolving lineage.
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31 January 2001
Not too long ago, determining the precise sequence of DNA was slow and tedious. Today, genome sequencing is a billion-dollar,
worldwide enterprise. Terabytes of sequence data generated through a melding of biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics,
computer science, and engineering are changing the way biologists work and think. And in 2000, biologists deciphered many
new genomes, including that of humans. In its 22 December edition,* Science marks this torrent of genome data as the Breakthrough
of the Year.
31 January 2001
This thought provoking article by IAN FOSTER starts with a statement: When the network is as fast as the computer's internal
links, the machine disintegrates across the net into a set of special purpose appliances. -- Gilder Technology Report, June
2000.
31 January 2001
The first December 2000 issue of TIME Magazine featured a series of articles entitled Inventors and Inventions of the Year;
in one of them, the 'winning combination' of positron emission tomography (PET) and computerized tomography (CT) was celebrated
as the major creative achievement in the Medical Science area.
31 January 2001
If you want to know about the public image problem of scientists, and whether an image consultant could be of any help, read
the interview with Max Clifford, one of the world's top PR advisers.
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