BEIJING (AP) ? A new strain of bird flu that emerged in China over the past month is one of the "most lethal" flu viruses so far, worrying health officials because it can jump more easily from birds to humans than the one that started killing people a decade ago, World Health Organization officials said Wednesday.
Scientists are watching the virus closely to see if it could spark a global pandemic but say there is little evidence so far that it can spread easily from human to human.
WHO's top influenza expert, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, told reporters at a briefing in Beijing that people seem to catch the H7N9 virus from birds more easily than the H5N1 strain that began ravaging poultry across Asia in 2003. The H5N1 strain has since killed 360 people worldwide, mostly after contact with infected fowl.
Health experts are concerned about H7N9's ability to jump to humans, and about the strain's capacity to infect birds without causing noticeable symptoms, which makes it difficult to monitor its spread.
"This is definitely one of the most lethal influenza viruses we have seen so far," Fukuda said. But he added that experts are still trying to understand the virus, and that there might be a large number of mild infections that are going undetected.
The H7N9 bird flu virus has infected more than 100 people in China, seriously sickening most of them and killing more than 20, mostly near the eastern coast around Shanghai. Taiwan on Wednesday confirmed its first case, a 53-year-old man who became sick after returning from a visit to the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu.
In comparison, the earlier bird flu strain, H5N1, is known to kill up to 60 of every 100 people it infects.
Wednesday's briefing came at the end of a weeklong joint investigation by WHO and Chinese authorities in Beijing and Shanghai.
Experts said they still aren't sure how people are getting infected but said evidence points to infections at live poultry markets, particularly through ducks and chickens. They said it was encouraging that reported infections appeared to slow down after the closure of live poultry markets in affected areas.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/flu-passes-more-easily-bird-human-073635353.html
bloomberg Daily Caller Staten Island Trick or Treat Amy Weber Happy Halloween! Star Wars Episode 7
Last September, we reported that VC firm Greylock Partners was planning on having a second Hackfest after the first one was a rousing success.?The Greylock Hackfest will take place on July 27 at Airbnb’s office in San Francisco. The idea of this particular event is to bring a selected group of university students from around the world for a 24-hour hackathon. During the process, the students will be getting mentorship from some of Greylock’s partners and portfolio companies. A new site, GreylockU, will be the host for all of the Hackfest information and the application. Additionally, students can submit their resumes for internships and full-time positions at Greylock’s more than 50 portfolio companies. By setting up this portal, Greylock hopes to feed its investments with the best and brightest talent from all over the globe. The judges for this year’s Hackfest are: Greylock Partner and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Airbnb Founder and CTO Nathan Blecharcyzk, Pure Storage CEO Scott Dietzen and Google Ventures Partner and Digg Founder Kevin Rose. The opportunity to apply for the Hackfest coincides with the admission of winning teams from campus hackathons that have already taken place at colleges like Princeton, Cal, Stanford, UPenn, CMU and MIT. The deadline for submissions is July 3, and Greylock would like students to come into the process with teams already created. Last year’s winners included Toaster.js, a hack involving power strip censors and controllers, linked to a physical device; Assassins, a cloud-based multi-player mobile game; and Dance, a multi-player dance game using optical recognition.cal recognition to spot faces and hands to score players. Other than being crowned champion, winning teams can grab free Amazon Web Services, Lytro cameras, office hours and a personal dinner with Reid Hoffman and DJ Patil from Greylock.
Southern California; the land of beauty, beaches, business and of course Hollywood.? Not only is this fantastic area a destination for vacationers all over the world but permanent inhabitants as well.? Moving to West Coast cities in the United States has been a common occurrence for over a century.? Starting of course with The California Gold Rush, but mining gold isn?t what people are moving that way for now.? It?s the entire package.? When thinking about why you should move to Southern California it?s not why ? it?s why not!
Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones
Facebook is planning to build a $1.5 billion data center project in Altoona, Iowa, that will cover 1.4 million square feet and serve as what the company says will be “the most advanced data center in the world.” The Des Moines Register, quoting sources in the state legislature, said the data center, code-named “Catapult,” will be built in two $500 million phases. When completed the total cost of the data center will hit the $1.5 billion price tag. As part of the deal, Facebook is also seeking wind energy production tax credits that would require legislative action. The Des Moines Register further reports that “the Iowa Economic Development Authority Board and Altoona?s City Council are expected to consider incentives for the project on Tuesday. State leaders have repeatedly declined to comment about the project. Facebook also has declined to comment.” Iowa has been competing fiercely for it with Nebraska over the past several months. The Register reports that the Facebook facility will be located in what is being called a “data center corridor,” due to its access to an extensive interstate fiber-optic cable system that is already installed within the city and running along Interstate Highway 80. It is in proximity to adequate power and water utilities. Land is affordable and has low natural-disaster risks. It is accessible to interstate highways. Facebook has emerged as a leader for how data centers are developed. Like a lot of Internet-scale companies, Facebook developed its own methods for building out data centers and the servers that go in these massive digital factories. It’s embodied in the Open Compute Project, which Facebook has been driving to get more innovation and efficiencies in data center build outs. This involves everything from heating and cooling to the way racks are designed to hold the server blades. They even had a data center hacking session at its last OpenCompute event. Data centers are also becoming symbolic of the social and political ramifications that come with building out this new form of programmable infrastructure. These data centers are tangible, physical representations of the Internet and the way we use data. And even though they employ relatively few people, their presence provides regions, like the one in Iowa, with ways to transform their economies beyond their farming and industrial roots. Facebook currently has data centers in Oregon and North Carolina. Facebook could not be reached for comment.