Rabies Vaccine Drop Area is Enlarged Two pet dogs, as well as coyotes, a raccoon and a bobcat, were found to be infected with the fox strain of rabies many miles beyond known fox habitat, raising suspicions that coyotes were to blame. Oertli said people should make sure their pets are vaccinated against rabies.
Express News
22 Mar 2007
Don Finley
Area: Texas, USA
State health officials, concerned that coyotes are spreading a fox strain of rabies well beyond the West Texas zone where vaccine-laden baits have been dropped for a dozen years, have returned to the area this week to expand their campaign.
Two months after the annual West Texas bait drop concluded, two King Air planes took off Wednesday from the Pecos County Airport in Fort Stockton to drop another 340,000 baits over 10 Texas counties.
"This year, just as we completed (the annual drop), we had two cases of rabies with the Texas fox variant outside of our vaccination zone," said Dr. Ernest Oertli, who heads the Oral Rabies Vaccination Program for the Texas Department of State Health Services. After the program increased its surveillance, Oertli said, several other cases appeared even farther west. "It looks like they went right up the Pecos River there," he said.
>>>Department of State Health Services
>>>World Rabies Day
>>>Oral Rabies Vaccine for Wildlife
Scientists Warn Invaders Threaten Wildlife
Belfasttelegraph
23 Mar 2007
Linda McKee
Area: Belfast, Ireland
Scientists are joining forces against the zebra mussels and New Zealand flatworm that are destroying Ireland's ecology. And more such 'invasive species' could be on the way, they warn.
The island's leading invasive species experts launched a new forum in Belfast yesterday to combat the threat posed by non-native plants and animals that are damaging habitats with their aggressive spread.
While many introduced species can co-exist happily with the local wildlife, some can damage native plants and animals by out-competing with them for habitat or food, preying on them, altering their habitat or introducing disease of parasites.Ireland's native wildlife has already been hard hit by notorious invaders such as zebra mussels, New Zealand flatworm, rhododendron and grey squirrels.But experts warn that a few more nasties could be on the way - and could devastate Ulster's wildlife.
Bob Davidson, a senior scientific officer of the DoE Environment and Heritage Service, said: "One such example is the North American signal crayfish, a very aggressive species that outcompetes our native white clawed crayfish for food and shelter.
Pacific Rim Bioinformatics Collaboration on Avian Flu Infection Control Today
23 Mar 2007
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and the University of Hawaii will use bioinformatics, grid computing and networking infrastructure, as well as collaborative ties to Asian institutions to learn more about avian flu, in hopes of helping to head off a much-feared pandemic in the region of the world where the disease has already cost human lives.
“We will use modern high-throughput biology to annotate the biological structures of different subtypes of the avian influenza virus, at the same time as we study their variations,” said principal investigator Peter Arzberger, director of Life Science Initiatives at UCSD. “We will also construct a grid infrastructure to support avian flu research – an infrastructure that could one day handle research on other infectious diseases as well.”
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