By Deborah Franklin

To spot a cross-cultural difference in the way people read facial expressions, look no further than the standard emoticons that pepper email in the west versus East Asia.

"Happy" in the west is :-) but in the east is (^_^), points out University of Glasgow psychologist Rachael Jack. "Sad" in the west is :-(. In the east sad is (;_;) or (T_T). "Surprise" in the west is :-o but in the east is (o.o).

What's this man saying with his eyes? (iStockphoto.com)

The eyes are key to the Japanese icons, Jack and other researchers have noted, while the western emoticons are all about the mouth.

In a little study published in the new issue of Current Biology, Jack and some colleagues found that the same East/West "cultural accent" shapes the way people read real faces, too.

Continue reading "Disgust or Anger? Some Looks Don't Translate" >

A really, really tight shot of a blood clot. (Courtesy Andre E.X. Brown, Rustem I. Litvinov, Dennis E. Discher, Prashant K. Purohit, John W. Weisel, University of Pennsylvania / Science)

by Deborah Franklin

This scanning electron micrograph of a blood clot -- taken from the coronary artery of somebody who had a heart attack -- might be scary if it weren't so cool.

It's a colorized portrait from University of Pennsylvania researchers reporting in this week's Science. Their study details the role a versatile molecule called fibrin plays in sealing off a wound or, in the case of a heart attack, blocking a blood vessel.

Look closely: The brown mesh is a wiry web of fibrin molecules. Strengthened by the purple-grey platelets, the fibrin mesh bends and stretches without breaking to catch red blood cells and infection-fighting white blood cells (tinted green in the photo) like fish in a net. Where does that flexibility come from?

The Penn study suggests the key is the way each molecule unfolds when tugged, exposing hidden inner parts of the fibrin string that then actively expel water. "That's how the whole clot volume decreases about ten-fold with three-fold stretching," says Penn biologist John Weisel. It's this molecular unfolding, the scientists write, "that allows clots to stretch so far."

by Deborah Franklin

Three weeks ago we told you of the brouhaha surrounding researchers in England who announced they'd created sperm from human stem cells ("All That Wriggles Is Not Science"). Critics at the time sniffed to reporters that the would-be sperm-makers were over-claiming. That the wiggling cells in a dish indeed had tails, but there was no proof that they were truly potent (or had other important sperm-like characteristics).

Now we're getting word that at least a few paragraphs of that "sperm" scientific manuscript were also plagiarized.

Oops.

(istockphoto.com)

Though the editors of Stem Cells and Development didn't publicly question the underlying science or its conclusions, they did retract the paper -- setting off yet another brouhaha over whether now they were being too tough. Harry Moore, a stem cell biologist at the University of Sheffield, who'd been critical of the initial study, told Nature this week about the retraction,

If there's nothing else behind this, it seems a little harsh.

Continue reading "Artificial Sperm Not So Hot" >

by Deborah Franklin

How can anybody resist a sweet-looking mouse named Tiny?

Chinese researchers writing in this week's Nature and Cell Stem Cell about their advance in stem cell research may have been trying to the defang the politics surrounding the controversial issue when they released a photo of one of their first mice made from skin cells. (He lives! He breeds!) They told the press that the little guy even has a name. Tiny.

Hmmm...Maybe health care legislation could benefit from a pint-sized mascot, too. Senate leader Harry Reid announced yesterday that his side of Congress will not have a health bill ready before August, despite President Obama's entreaties.

The House is still working hard to meet the August deadline, Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel told NPR's Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition. Emanuel says the real deadline is the end of the year and he and President Obama expect a bill by then. One of the big hurdles for all sides, he agrees, is reconciling the cost of the plan.

For 40 years we've had a debate about health care that was solely about expanding coverage. For the first time, you have the dual goals of controlling costs and expanding coverage.

(Read Past The Jump To Hear How Obama's Money Guys Suggest Controlling Costs)

Continue reading "Morning Rounds: Stem Cell Mice and Taming Health Costs" >

by Deborah Franklin

How much heat can the human body take? /istockphotos.com

Let's hear it for all the scientists who go first. Sure, being a human guinea pig has its risks, but life is never boring.

Take for example, Sir Charles Blagden, who in 1775, took a few pals and their dog into a room heated up to 240 degrees Fahrenheit --well above the boiling point of water -- to see, well, to see what would happen.

To hear all about their story and the beauty of sweat, listen to the piece by NPR's Robert Krulwich tonight on All things Considered.

Also check out the cool video version of the tale by Krulwich and animator Lev Yilmaz.

Just don't try this at home. Your dog may survive, but she'll hate you.

by Richard Knox

Growing the new H1N1 virus in eggs is proving tough for vaccine makers /istockphotos.com

Even with the best-case scenarios, it was a very tall order -- make enough of a new swine flu vaccine to blunt the edge of a pandemic in time for flu season this fall.

Forget best-case. The World Health Organization says the virus that's being injected into eggs to create the pandemic vaccine is not growing well at all. Compared to seasonal flu viruses, it's growing only 25 to 50 percent as fast.

Scientists don't understand why. It seems a crucial surface protein on the new H1N1 virus, called hemagglutinin, is not very stable.

The bad news, announced at a press briefing today, has thrown vaccine researchers around the planet back to square one. They've scurried to isolate new samples of the virus from infected people and are working at top speed to hybridize those fresh strains with a standard flu virus that they know grows well in chicken eggs.

If they're lucky, they could have a new "seed strain" in hand later this month.

Not a moment to lose: Human tests with the pandemic vaccine are scheduled to begin in August. If those go well, manufacturers could still start cranking out the stuff by October.

(read past the jump to hear of hurdles that still loom)

Continue reading "Manufacturing Problems With Swine Flu Vaccine" >

by Deborah Franklin

You get coconut water -- not the milk --from immature fruit like these /istockphoto.com

Why yes, say the folks at Consumer Reports who went to the trouble of contrasting and comparing.

Turns out the "water" -- a clear juice you can get in bottles, or served with a straw straight from the "nut" in the tropics -- comes from young coconuts. It's tasty, low in calories, and has a few minerals. It's even been shown in very preliminary research to tug down bad cholesterol levels -- in rats.

Coconut milk, on the other hand, comes from the mashed up innards of mature coconuts. It has a whopping 552 calories per cup (compared to coconut water's 46), and 50 grams of its fat is saturated. Ouch.

Still, don't get overeager and sub in the "water" for the "milk" in recipes, say the CR chefs. It'll throw off the taste and texture of your dish. Better to go ahead and occasionally enjoy that tasty Thai soup for lunch, and then cut calories elsewhere, or pump up your exercise to burn the fat.

Got any other health questions of your own?

It's time. You all did wonderfully well on yesterday's science quiz, but surely you, too, have a few coconut-like queries you've been wondering about.

Let us know, and we'll start publishing answers (and, maybe, the further questions they raise) -- at least once a week -- in the blog. Consider it a sort of Science-Out-of-the-Box spin-off, or Science Question Friday.

You can ask your questions on any health- or science-related topic in comments below, or send them more quietly to us here.

Please do. The lines are very open.

by Deborah Franklin

A science quiz you'll like (no cramming required) /istockphoto.com

Never miss a chance to simultaneously impress and show up your smarty-pants brother-in-law or boss. With that in mind...

The Pew Research Center has come up with a 12-question online science quiz. (Relax. It's all True/False or Multiple Choice. No essays.)

For example:

-- How are stem cells different from other cells?

-- What did scientists recently discover on Mars?

-- Is all radioactivity man-made?

The quiz, which is part of a nationwide poll and report on Americans' knowledge of science, also lets you check your score against those surveyed. (Here's a freebie: Fifty-six percent of Americans incorrectly believe that antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria).

The Pew's report offers insights into how much Americans trust science and scientists. Only 49 percent of those surveyed said they believe the earth is getting warmer because of human activity. (Eighty-four percent of scientists said they agree).

Only 32 percent of Americans queried said "humans and other living things have evolved over time" and "evolution is the result of natural processes such as natural selection." Eighty-seven percent of scientists agreed. (What's up with the other 13 percent?)

The pollsters also asked Americans to say "yes" if they agree that the following professions "contribute a lot to society's well being."

(Read after the jump to see how your profession rates)

Continue reading "Quick -- Test Your Science IQ" >

by Deborah Franklin

News of lab-created sperm a bit premature /istockphoto.com

Researchers from northeast England claim in a study published today to have successfully prodded some human embryonic stem cells into becoming sperm.

The announcement drew a flurry of interest this morning, especially from the British press. But other researchers scrutinizing the study say that what's been created -- at least so far -- is still a long way from the real deal.

There's no proof these little cells could actually fertilize an egg, and good reason to think they couldn't.

"I am unconvinced from the data presented in this paper that the cells...can be accurately called 'spermatozoa,'" Allan Pacey, an infertility specialist at the University of Sheffield told the Associated Press. Though the lab-produced cells have the right number of chromosomes, and some proteins characteristic of sperm, they don't seem to have the proper shape or movement of authentic sperm, Paley said, and aren't developed enough to be functional.

Continue reading "All That Wiggles Is Not Sperm" >

by Deborah Franklin

As the new team at the FDA launches its mid-summer clean-up, where better to start than the kitchen?

At a press conference later today, the agency is expected to take aim at food poisoning -- salmonella and E.coli, in particular -- by tightening the rules that govern how manufacturers handle eggs and improving the food tracking system so that it's easier to quickly trace contaminated ingredients to their source.

We can also expect tighter rules on the handling of produce by the end of this month, and tighter poultry inspections and standards by the end of the year, according to FDA and industry sources quoted by AP and Reuters. Still no word on how E.coli got into Toll House cookie dough at that plant in Danville, Virginia.

Meanwhile, with yesterday's announcement that the Obama administration has rolled back some restrictions on the federal funding of stem cell research, several cash strapped states are hoping to lure some of that research money and new jobs.

Continue reading "FDA Tightens Food Rules As NIH Relaxes On Stem Cells" >

by Jon Hamilton

Genetically challenged /istockphoto.com

If a sleepless night makes it hard to think, blame your brain -- and your genes.

Scientists from Belgium and the UK say people with a gene that lets them stay out all night and still ace the final have brains that become more active as they get tired.
In contrast, people who are genetically vulnerable to the effects of sleeplessness have brains that become less active with fatigue.

The finding, published in this week's issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, comes from a study that compared the brains of people with two different forms of a gene called PER3. The "short" version of PER3 makes you resilient to sleep deprivation. The "long" one leaves you vulnerable.

Researchers had a couple of dozen people with long and short versions of the gene stay up all night. Then they slid the sleepy volunteers into a brain scanner and asked them to do some simple memory tests.

Genetically resilient people did a lot better than the vulnerable people. In fact, one person with the vulnerable version of PER3 got booted from the study because he nodded off inside the scanner.

Continue reading "Night Owls Have Different Brains" >

by Alison Richards

This tiny mussel shrimp's extinct cousin showed the ladies love with his giant sperm /Renate Matzke-Karasz

Guys do anything to get the girl. It was the same 100 million years ago.

Some of the hottest studs around during the Cretaceous Period were tiny creatures a bit like mussels called ostracodes. And even though they were only a few millimeters in size, researchers have just discovered that their sperm cells were gigantic - up to ten times as big as the crustaceans themselves.

To peek at what this guy's machinery looked like in a short 3-D movie, click here.

Continue reading "Size Does Matter" >

by Richard Harris

New apartments in southeast China's Fuzhou. Housing boom means a boom in coal plants, too. /dnkb/AP/ImagineChina

Together, the US and China are now responsible for 40 percent of the world's emissions of carbon dioxide, with China now in the lead. That means even if everybody else stops emitting carbon entirely, the earth will still continue to heat rapidly unless these two giants can get their emissions under control.

What's a body to do?

State Department climate envoy Todd Stern just got back from a brainstorming session with his Chinese counterparts. At a press conference today he said the meetings didn't produce any breakthroughs, but he does now have a deeper appreciation of what China's up against.

Half of all housing in the world is going to be built in China over the course of the next couple of decades. They are building housing at the rate of two Bostons a month.

Continue reading "Two Bostons A Month: A Climate Challenge" >

by April Fulton

Coral jewelry display at a jewelry stall in Volendam, Netherlands, in February 2007. Andrew3000/via Too Precious to Wear

 

Coral jewelry displays like this one haven't graced a Tiffany's window in at least seven years. That's because the jewelry giant stopped selling coral in 2002.

Corals are animals that join together to form reefs that provide marine life with places to hide, mate and search for food. They help feed people, protect coastlines, and form the basis for development of drugs to treat HIV and cancer.

But they are disappearing, in large part, because they are so pretty. Ancient people even thought they had magical powers. Although there's a pretty significant global warming impact, too.

Continue reading "Compassion For Coral" >

by Deborah Franklin

Mike Begier and Allen Gosser of USDA Wildlife Services pull feathers from jet engine for analysis. /National Transportation Safety Board

The flock of Canadian geese that knocked out two jet engines and forced a US Airways Airbus A320 into the Hudson River in January, were just passing through--not locals--according to a chemical analysis of their feathers by the Smithsonian Institution.

The analysis tracked the relative amounts of stable hydrogen isotopes, which turns out to be a telltale sign of what the birds ate, and where that food came from. Apparently, these geese were based in Newfoundland, not Queens.

That's an important distinction, and not just for chauvinistic New Yorkers, according to Peter Marra, a migratory bird specialist at the Smithsonian National Zoo.

Continue reading "Tracking the Geese That Kill Planes" >

by Deborah Franklin

Will the real journalist please stand up? /istockphoto.com

Many scientists see "tweeting" brief news updates from research conferences as just a hobby--a good way to tell pals at home about something cool they've just learned.

But tweets are public, which makes these mini-reports sort of like journalism. So Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories now says it wants any scientist sending these spot blog posts from its meetings to abide by the same restrictions it imposes on the mainstream media (such as checking with a speaker before posting study results).

ScienceInsider has the story of who complained. Daniel MacArthur of Genetic Future responds here. And blogging scientist Andrew Maynard explains why he thinks the lab's new "citizen journalist" rules shouldn't apply to him.

You be the judge.

by April Fulton

How many times did we invent this? The world may never know istockphoto.com

Why are humans so smart? It's not because we started memorizing our multiplication tables, but apparently math played a big role in our evolution.

On All Things Considered this morning, NPR's Chris Joyce reports on an article from the journal Science about archaeological evidence and a new mathematical model showing that new inventions caught on faster and lasted longer in the collective memory when our ancestors started living together in larger groups.

Hear Evolutionary Geneticist Mark Thomas explain his theory using the example of a guitar audition:

Brush up on your calculus skills first, if you must, but hear Joyce's full story here.

by Deborah Franklin

Cute, sure. But can he save the world? /istockphoto.com

In headlines this week: Scientists in China say they've managed to turn skin cells from the ears of adult pigs into "pluripotent" stem cells that, theoretically, can be coaxed into becoming any sort of pig tissue.

Dr Lei Xiao, the lead researcher from Shanghai University, told the BBC that the achievement was "entirely new, very important and has a number of applications for both human and animal health."

Interesting, sure. Eventually useful? Maybe. Overhyped? Read on.

In interviews with a wide range of media outlets, including New Scientist, The Times of India, and Medical News Today, Dr. Xiao and others said the new stem cells might eventually offer solutions to the transplanted organ shortage, the obesity epidemic, and swine flu. Yowza!

That's just the sort of highfalutin-claim-cloaked-in-weak-caveats (think Pop Rocks) that attends most mentions of stem cell research these days.

And it's not just the media that's overheated, according to bioethicist Alta Charo.

Continue reading "This Little Piggy's Been Hyped" >

by Deborah Franklin

Madame Curie would be so proud. /Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Good news today for girls, women, and the men who love them: The math/science gender gap in the U.S. seems to be shrinking on many fronts.

A report released this morning by the National Research Council (NRC) found that, on average, women scientists and engineers with PhDs fare just as well as men in terms of getting a top job, getting grants, getting promoted, publishing research in high-profile journals, and earning a decent starting salary. That's based on a survey of 89 top research institutions.

That's on top of a new finding that young girls on average are now performing just as well as boys in math in the U.S.

Continue reading "Math Gender Gap Takes A Dive" >

by April Fulton

The diverse bacteria found in 20 different places on the skin may deepen our understanding of disease /NHGRI

Speaking of cells, did you know just how much diversity there is in the bacterial cells that live on our skin, or why you should care?

NPR's Richard Harris reports on a new article published in the journal Science today:

The [skin] bacteria are part of genuine ecosystems -- akin to life on the savannah, or the ocean, or the rich life of a tropical rain forest.

The National Human Genome Research Institute sampled the bacterial wildlife from 20 spots on the bodies of 10 volunteers.

National Geographic notes, "armpits are 'rain forests' for bacteria."

Continue reading "Bacteria Cells On Skin Diverse As Earth" >

by April Fulton

Sometimes things aren't what they seem, noted Alice in Wonderland when she fell through the looking glass.

This slideshow, posted by our sister blog, The Picture Show, is a preview of an art exhibit entitled "Tiny: Art From Microscopes at UW-Madison."

It offers a side of cells and molecules many of us may have never given much thought to -- their beauty.

The tiny picture show opened, appropriately enough, at the tiny Dane County Regional Airport last month.

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TEXT.

For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.

by Deborah Franklin

Genes from the Crystal Jelly (Aequorea aequoera) were used to create glow-in-dark monkeys and that could eventually help people with Parkinson disease. Gabriel Bouys, AFP

 

You'll hear about glow-in-the dark monkeys tonight on NPR's All Things Considered, and it's a medical story. Really, it is.

NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports on the success of Japanese researchers who have managed to take a glow-in-the-ultra-violet-light gene from jellyfish and insert it into marmoset embryos. And that's not even the impressive part. The real trick was successfully getting those little embryos to grow up into adult monkeys that passed along the "glowing" gene to their offspring and descendents.

It's not just a party trick. (Scientists who figured out how to use the glow-in-the-dark substance as a label got a Nobel prize last fall.) The goal is to create a good animal model of human disease, a target that's been elusive for many devastating illnesses.

Continue reading "Monkey's Uncle Gets A Human Gene" >

by Deborah Franklin

Tobacco's the big health risk, toxicologists say. Plastics not so much. iStockphoto.com

You say health hazard, I say overblown hysteria...at least in many cases. That's the word from the Society of Toxicology, the leading professional association for the folks who study chemical health risks for a living.

In a Harris poll conducted this spring, the scientists came down hard on environmental activists and media for muddying the message--overplaying relatively small health risks like certain chemical additives in food and baby bottles, while underplaying the relative risks of some pesticides and tobacco. Industry got plenty of blame, too, for generally underplaying the risk of their products.

Continue reading "Toxicologists Weigh In On Chemical Risks" >

By Deborah Franklin

Daniel Carasso, son of the founder of the yogurt company Danone (known as Dannon in the US), at the company's 90th anniversary celebration in April 2009, in Barcelona. JACQUES DEMARTHON/AFP/Getty Images

Pause a minute over your afternoon smoothie or tube of GoGurt to remember Daniel Carasso, the man the Washington Post today calls "the father of modern yogurt." Carasso died this month in Paris at 103.

It was Carasso and pals at Dannon who, in 1947, shoveled some strawberry jam to the bottom of the traditionally sour snack, and advertised it as a "healthy dessert." (That sounds a lot better than soured milk pumped up with "good-for-you" bacteria.) Sales took off and kept climbing.

Continue reading "Even Yogurt Has Its Limits" >

by Vaughn Ververs

Feed a cold, starve a fever and ... intentionally try to contract the swine flu? The new addition wouldn't quite have the same ring as the old adage but it's a discussion that has begun, thanks in large part to an article in today's New York Times.

The paper examines an emerging debate over the wisdom of deliberately trying to catch the swine flu in an attempt to give oneself protection against a more devastating strain of the virus down the road.

The thinking is this: If the current strain appears to be relatively mild at the moment and could become more severe somewhere down the road, is it better to be get it now and build up a natural immunization?

Cornell University flu specialist Dr. Anne Moscona tells the paper where she stands on the idea: "I think it's totally nuts. ... I can't believe people are really thinking of doing it. I understand the thinking, but I just fear we don't know enough about how this virus would react in every individual. This is like the Middle Ages, when people deliberately infected themselves with smallpox."

Continue reading "Experts Warn Against Swine Flu Self-Infection" >

By Frank James

Why do outbreaks caused by flu and other viruses often seem worse initially than they turn out to be?

That's the question Jon Hamilton examines in a report on All Things Considered this afternoon.

As Hamilton explains, it all has to do with how many people are in the denominator and how sick they are. The relatively fewer there are and the sicker they are, the worse the situation looks. Hamilton talked with Dr. Rob Fowler, a critical care physician in Toronto, to understand what doctors there saw when SARS struck in 2003.

HAMILTON: At first, it appeared that SARS was killing nearly 50 percent of the people who got infected. But as the outbreak progressed it became clear the true death rate was closer to 5 percent.

Fowler says it took awhile before doctors started looking for SARS in people who weren't critically ill. And that made the disease look even more frightening than it turned out to be.

Continue reading "Why Are Virus Outbreaks Often Not As Bad As First Feared?" >

Egyptian pigs with their backs against the wall. KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images

 

By Frank James

Why hasn't Egypt slaughtered its entire poultry population?

That question arises because of reports that avian flu has been a bigger problem in Egypt than swine flu. Avian flu is linked to the deaths of at least three people in the last month according to at least one report while not a single case of swine flu has been reported in Egypt.

Yet the Egyptian government ordered the slaughter of the nation's entire 300,000 pig population. And while the keeping of birds in populated areas has been officially banned, according to a piece on the Radio Netherlands Worldwide website:

... People are still keeping chickens, ducks, geese and pigeons in populated areas, in both rural and urban areas. It is mostly young women who feed the fowl, that contract the disease.

Continue reading "Why No Avian Flu-Related Poultry Slaughter In Egypt?" >

By Frank James

Reader Tina Hatch (thatch123) asks:

What's the definition of a "probable" and "confirmed" case? Has a "probable" case been tested locally?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has very clear guidelines on what constitutes a probable case versus a confirmed case of swine flu aka 2009 H1N1 flu. (Well, it's clear if you're a public health doctor. Otherwise, it needs some translation.)

A suspected case requires only that a person show typical flu-like symptoms -- fever, achiness and the rest -- and that they have been exposed to the flu virus by either coming into contact in the past week with a person with a confirmed case of swine flu or traveled in the same time period to a place suffering an outbreak or live in such an area.

Continue reading "How Do Probable, Confirmed Swine Flu Cases Differ?" >

By Frank James

If the world's infectious disease researchers get a handle on the latest version of the swine flu currently coursing across continents, humanity will likely owe a debt of gratitude to that cute and elongated mammal, the ferret.

iStockPhoto.com

As Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, director of the World Health Organization's Initiative for Vaccine Research explained at a briefing today:

"Prior to going into humans there will be experiments done in animal models. And for influenza there is one good model which is the ferret. So this little animal can be infected with the flu virus and there will be experiments to try to demonstrate at the very early stages of development... which formulation of vaccine seems to protect the ferret against this infection and potentially crossing over with other viruses"

Continue reading "Swine Flu Researchers 'Ferret Out' Vaccine" >

by Rebecca Davis

A Veracruz, Mexico, health official checks a masked boy for swine flu. Carrie Kahn/NPR

NPR's crack health and science team takes a break from reporting on the 2009 H1N1/swine flu outbreak to look back at the week's events. In this podcast special, health and science editors and reporters discuss how the outbreak unfolded and the status of the vaccine.

They also examine this recurring question: The virus doesn't seem all that bad here -- is everyone overreacting?

Don't be too comforted, they caution. There's still a lot we don't know about this new strain of flu. So -- listen in and find out more:

You can sign up to receive our latest NPR: On Health Podcasts here.

Also, if you have questions you're not finding answers to about the swine flu -- please write us at NPRHealth@npr.org ... And early next week, we'll post another podcast with answers!

Professor's Computer Simulations Show Worst-Case Swine Flu Scenario from Northwestern News on Vimeo.

By Frank James

How many swine flu cases will the U.S. have in the next four weeks?

No one really knows. But computer modeling permits an educated guess and that's where a group of Northwestern University researchers comes in. Based on computer simulations they've run, under a worst-case scenario in which authorities do very little to intervene, we reach 1,700 victims in four weeks.

Here's how a Northwestern press release explains it:

Associate Professor Dirk Brockmann (http://rocs.northwestern.edu/) and his research group have found that the major areas projected to have incidents in the worst-case scenario include California, Texas and Florida. Worst-case scenario means that no measures have been taken to combat the spread of disease. These numbers would, of course, be lessened by preventive measures already under way.

Under the worst-case scenario, more than 100 cases are projected for the Chicago area. The affected locations largely correspond to major transportation hubs in the country. The researchers also will be running simulations on the possible time course of the spread of swine flu in Europe.

Brockmann says their swine flu results are in excellent agreement to those of a research group at Indiana University led by Alex Vespignani that is using a different method.

Continue reading "Swine Flu Simulation Predicts 1,700 Cases By June" >