US: Presidential Candidates Face Off In Parody Flip Book

The two most unpopular candidates in U.S. Presidential history have been commemorated in a thumb-powered flip book entitled "Tough Decision 2016," created by Flippies Custom Flip Books. (PRNewsFoto/Flippies, Inc.) 

The two most unpopular candidates in U.S. Presidential history have been commemorated in a thumb-powered flip book entitled "Tough Decision 2016," created by Flippies Custom Flip Books (flippies.com/).

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo & Los Angeles' Mountain Lion: Danish Film Composer Jacob Groth To Headline Benefit Concert

Nordic Noir LA: A Benefit Concert for Friends of Griffith Park (PRNewsFoto/Friends of Griffith Park)

On September 25, 2016 renowned film composer Jacob Groth (Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy - 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,' 'The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest' and 'The Girl Who Played With Fire') and the Danish Film Harmonics Orchestra will headline a special benefit concert for Friends of Griffith Park at Los Angeles' Greek Theatre.

Factors That Contribute To The Popularity Of The Netflix Series 'House Of Cards'

For those of you who are series addicts or have a certain series that keeps you anticipating what's going to happen next, then you most likely have heard of not watched the Netflix series “house of cards”. The show which is ongoing premiered on the 1st of February, 2013 to rave reviews. It even as a good rating on the review site Rotten Tomatoes which everyone knows is hard to come by. Since its premiere, the show has gained a cult following which has led to its continuous renewal over the years. With the President of the United States said to be a fan of the series, the question then is what makes this series different from every other one out there that causes it to have such popularity?

How To Stop A Zombie Apocalypse – With Science

Shutterstock

By Joanna Verran, Manchester Metropolitan University and Matthew Crossley, Manchester Metropolitan University

Zombie films often end with a miracle cure or the arrival of the army (or the protagonists and the world facing uncertain doom). But what would happen if a new disease started converting humans into a zombie-like state for real, and how might we actually stop it? Answering this kind of question isn’t just a fun exercise – it can tell us a lot about how a genuine highly infectious condition might spread.

Scientists who study disease – epidemiologists – need to answer questions such as how a disease spreads, how fast it is likely to move through a population and, most importantly, how best to stop the outbreak and prevent future events.

Imagine if a new “zombieism” disease broke out that spread through the commonly portrayed method of infected saliva that enters a person’s bloodstream after being bitten by a zombie. This kind of direct contact spread would normally be quite an inefficient method for disease transmission compared to airborne infections, which can be spread much more easily. But zombieism is interesting because, like rabies, its symptoms can include anxiety, agitation, paranoia and terror that alter the behaviour of the infected individual. So zombies will actively try to bite or eat their victims, thereby spreading the disease faster.

Finding the source
The original source of the zombie outbreak is rarely a concern in horror films, whereas epidemiologists spend a lot of time using analysis and models to track back to the first case(s) of disease. For example, a biological agent released into the air or contaminated food consumed at a large social event might cause a large number of infected individuals at one time. A laboratory accident, on the other hand, might initially affect a reasonably small, possibly contained number of individuals, in a small area. These parameters, as well as the mode of transmission, will affect the disease’s spread.

Armed with an understanding of the transmission method, we can consider how fast the disease could move through a population. For any epidemic, epidemiologists will try to calculate a basic reproduction ratio that describes the average number of additional cases an infected individual will generate. This number (often referred to as R₀) describes how severe an outbreak is. One with an R₀ of less than 1 will eventually die out, but greater than 1 will spread through a population.

Our zombies do not expire naturally and require the removal of their head or destruction of their brain for permanent death. So the main consideration in a zombie epidemiology model is how many people a zombie can bite before it either runs out of victims or is destroyed. This is a function of many other variables including population density and people’s ability to destroy zombies. The zombies might be the slow shambling monsters of tradition, or perhaps the faster, more deadly infected humans portrayed in the film 28 Days Later.

If we assume that the zombies hunt naively, then population density is one of the most important considerations. A heavily populated area provides plenty of opportunities for any given zombie to feed, and infected cases will increase rapidly. Isolated zombies, however, would have a tendency to shuffle around causing no real harm.

Finally, having established how our disease is spread and how fast it could bring about the end times (or not, as the case may be), we need to identify the best method for reducing our R₀ below 1. This will ensure the infection does not lead to a zombie apocalypse.

There are typically four response strategies to zombieism, each with a grounding in epidemiological study. An obvious strategy is to quarantine the infected individuals, possibly with the hope of developing a cure or vaccine. While this can be successful, the process of developing a cure is lengthy and difficult, and maintaining a perfect quarantine is difficult and risky. In cases with a high R₀, as is typical of zombie epidemics, even one infected individual that breeches quarantine or is not captured risks annihilating the host species.

A strategy often seen in zombie stories is for the uninfected to hide away, essentially isolating those who are healthy from those who are infected. This is typically employed when the infected individuals vastly outnumber the healthy. This protection could be seen as some sort of immunisation but success relies on a continued ability to remain apart. Once the infected hordes have breached your protected zone, you have already created a perfect environment for the disease to spread rapidly in a small space.

Extreme solutions
With no treatment option, a selective cull that involves attempting to remove the infected individuals from the population permanently is a tempting option. But this suffers from the same problems as quarantine. Not only does it require efficient removal of the infected, there also needs to be some diagnostic screening process in hand so that early cases with fewer symptoms can be detected.

This leaves the scariest of the options: eradicate the infected area with a pre-emptive cull, with little to no concern for who, or what, is destroyed in the process. With heavy casualties but a guaranteed end to the infection, this is often the choice the “military” characters plump for in a zombie story. Assuming you could successfully eradicate all of the infected individuals, this might appear the best option. But moral issues remain regarding the heavy losses of uninfected individuals that would also take place.

Real diseases are rarely as powerful as those in zombie films, which usually have a 100% transmission rate and come with a near complete lack of immunity, recovery or treatment. But exploring fictitious zombie-like pandemics also offers an exciting way to discuss infectious disease transmission, prevention and treatment. So next time you sit down to watch your favourite zombie film or TV show, put yourself in the shoes of the world’s epidemiologists: What would you do, and why?


About Today's Contributors
Joanna Verran, Professor of microbiology, Manchester Metropolitan University and Matthew Crossley, Lecturer in Web Technologies, Manchester Metropolitan University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

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Donald Trump Vs Theresa May [Petition]

The following is the email I've received today from Greenpeace... 

It looks like Donald Trump and co have a rather dangerous agenda regarding Climate Change and the Paris Climate Deal. But, if enough of us sign the petition, they might not succeed after all. 

Definitely worth adding our names to it.

Keep up the good fight...

Loup Dargent

We're No Strangers To 'Alien' False Alarms – One Was Caused By A Microwave Oven

By Mark Gallaway, University of Hertfordshire

The group of Russian astronomers spotted something unusual. They were observing the rather innocuous star HD 164595, located in the constellation of Hercules 94 light years (or about 900 trillion kilometres) from Earth. It’s a sun-like star of a similar age to the Sun and is known to have at least one large planet orbiting it. So it was with some surprise that the astronomers at the RATAN-600 radio telescope, located in Zelenchukskaya and led by Nikolay Bursov, received a short but loud radio burst from the direction of HD 164595.

News of the signal broke in mid August this year – even though it was originally picked up on May 15 2015. Given the possible origin of the radio signal, its frequency, and the signal strength there has been much speculation about what the source could be, including the possibility that it is a beacon signal from an advanced alien civilisation.

Daily Mail's Richard Littlejohn Is Living Proof That The Right Doesn't Do Satire

The joke’s on LIttlejohn. Press Gazette, CC BY-SA

By Allaina Kilby, Cardiff University

The Daily Mail has never tried to hide its anti-immigration stance, but there can be few more egregious examples of out-and-out bigotry than Richard Littlejohn’s recent attempt at a satirical article which outlined an unconventional approach to weeding out Britain’s illegal immigrant population.

The article relates to an essay written in the Mail on Sunday by an anonymous, yet experienced asylum judge. In it, the judge makes the case that Britain’s asylum system is broken by highlighting how immigrants can “go below the radar for years”. Apparently, their cover could now be blown because evidence supplied by the sewage industry reveals that “that there are more than a million more people in London than are legally registered”.

Cue Littlejohn’s proposal of monitoring sewage waste as a way of efficiently “flushing out” illegal immigrants.

BraveNewFilms.org Commemorates MLK's Speech Anniversary With ''I Have A Dream’ Belongs To Us, Too’ Re-release

With today being the fifty-third anniversary of Martin Luther King's historical speech, the email I received earlier from BraveNewFilms.org was rather timely... 

So, killing two birds with one stone (not literally, obviously...) I decided to share it (in a slightly edited version) on here. 

Enjoy!

Loup Dargent

Canada: PM Justin Trudeau's Reply To The #PovertyIsSexist Campaign

While some heartless third rate "celebrities" such as Katie Hopkins tend to diss online petitions/campaigns at every opportunity , the following email from One.org I received earlier today does show that online petitions/campaigns do work (maybe not all the times, but they do most of the times...) and adding our names/voices to them is definitely not a waste of time.

But, don't take my word for it.. read the email and see by yourself.

Keep up the good fight and keep making your voices heard!

(And let's prove all the Katie Hopkins of the world wrong in the process...)

Loup Dargent

Save The Calais Children [Petition]

Image via Avaaz.org

300 refugee children are stuck in the "living hell" of the Calais refugee camp, waiting for our government's promise of a new life in the UK to come through. A massive public outcry can push the PM to let these children come to their family already waiting here, before the new school term. 

>> Sign here and share this campaign on Facebook, Twitter, everywhere... <<

How #PokemonGo Turned Couch Potatoes Into Fitness Fanatics Without Them Even Realising It

Gotta catch ‘em all. Stoyan Yotov / Shutterstock.com

By John A Parkinson, Bangor University
Pokemon Go is taking the world by storm. Within days of its US release, its number of daily active users caught up with longstanding apps Twitter, Snapchat and Google Maps, and it became the biggest mobile game in US history. Since then, the game has been launched worldwide, creating a user base which spends more time playing Pokemon Go than the average Facebook user spends on site.

What Do Aliens Look Like? The Clue Is In Evolution

Well, maybe. BagoGames/Flickr, CC BY-SA

By Matthew Wills, University of Bath
Speculating about what aliens look like has kept children, film producers and scientists amused for decades. If they exist, will extra terrestrials turn out to look similar to us, or might they take a form beyond our wildest imaginings? The answer to this question really depends on how we think evolution works at the deepest level.