tagged w/ Contagious
-
-
-
eva2
-
added this
-
1 year ago
- |
-
Like a virus, revolt has spread rapidly over the last few weeks from Tunisia to Egypt, with additional riots and protests in nearby Jordan and Yemen, and rumblings that Syria may be next.
As alarming as the spread of uprisings might be, the recent chain of events echo numerous periods of discontent that stretch back more than 200 years.
From the impact of the Berlin Wall's demise in 1989 to a series of revolutions that swept Europe in 1848, unrest has triggered more unrest, time and again -- especially since mass communication allowed word to spread quickly from one place to another.
"Revolutions can sometimes be contagious," said John McManus, a military historian at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla. "The take-home lesson from history is that you always have no idea how it's going to turn out, and that's kind of the scary part. You have no idea where the forces are going to go once they're unleashed."
Perhaps the earliest historical example was the American Revolution against Great Britain. Its success in 1776, in the view of most historians, inspired France to seek and win its own independence by 1789.
A more extensive spread of strife began in France in 1848, when disenfranchised members of the lower middle-class revolted against King Louis Philippe's corrupt and elitist rule. As Louis Philippe fled the country, rebellion spread to Germany, where people already held similar grievances and the idea of rebellion had been long fermenting. From there, revolt surged through Austria, Poland, Russia, Italy and beyond.
"There's no question that one thing leads to another," McManus said. "People see it going on in France. They see that yeah, it can be done, and maybe the time is right. Revolution literally spread like wildfire that year."
Other examples include the secession of South Carolina in 1860 from what the state saw as a tyrannical American government. Alabama, Mississippi and other southern states followed—a domino effect that led directly to the Civil War. And the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was part of a wave of uprisings against Communism in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria.
While the current situation in the Middle East involves its own unique cultural and political details, it shares many common themes with the past, said Ziad Fahmy, a historian of modern Egypt at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
Like other contagious revolutions, he said, this one began years earlier, with a stewing sense of dissatisfaction toward an oppressive regime, along with growing urban centers and other deeply rooted cultural changes. Such unhappiness often sets the stage for a trigger event, which begins the toppling of metaphorical dominoes.
In this case, the trigger was a Tunisian protester who set himself on fire in mid-December. Subsequent protests led quickly to the flight of Tunisia's present and similar revolts in neighboring nations.
For a single revolt to become contagious, Fahmy added, communication is key. In 1848, it was the recently invented telegraph along with printed newspapers that clued people in to what was happening across national lines.
Today, it's Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. And when electronic means failed, Egyptian protesters made do the old-fashioned way, with printed instructions about what to do.
At its heart, rebellious contagion feeds off of the sense of inspiration people feel when they see people in similar situations striking back -- and succeeding.
"People see that as a template that they can follow, and they see that it can happen," Fahmy said. "It begins to chip away at that barrier of fear."
What history can't do is help experts predict where revolutions will begin, how far they will spread or how it will all end. Outcomes are often surprising and not always positive. Looking to the past, Fahmy said, is also unlikely to prevent new revolts from cropping up in the future and spreading like the flu.
"No one ever learns from history," he said. "There are always going to be new grievances and new media. This is human nature. When people are oppressed, they will revolt."
http://news.discovery.com/history/egypt-revolution-contagious-110203.htmlLike a virus, revolt has spread rapidly over the last few weeks from Tunisia to Egypt,... more
-
-
Haiti reported more cholera deaths Wednesday as chaos reigned in this country's second-largest city, and cases among people who had traveled from Haiti were reported in Florida and the Dominican Republic.
At least six people were wounded in related violence in Haiti.
The cholera-infected woman who had recently traveled from Haiti to Florida was recovering, the Florida Department of Health said.
Her case was identified through the state's disease surveillance system and sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, where it was confirmed, the state health department said.
Florida, home to about 241,000 Haiti-born residents, has asked local health care providers to watch for people who become sick or show symptoms of cholera after returning from travel to Haiti.
"We are working with our health care partners to ensure appropriate care of this individual and prevent the spread of this disease within the community," said State Surgeon General Ana Viamonte Ros. "We will continue to monitor the state for any future cases."
The first confirmed case in the Dominican Republic was a 32-year-old Haitian construction worker who returned Friday from Haiti with symptoms of the illness, the health ministry said Tuesday night.
The man, who was vomiting and had diarrhea, was hospitalized in Higuey, near the eastern resort town of Punta Cana, said Health Minister Bautista Rojas Gomez. The man was in stable condition, according to the newspaper El Nacional.
Neither case was a surprise, said Dr. Jordan Tappero, team leader in Haiti for the CDC in Port-au-Prince. "CDC has been expecting to see cholera cases elsewhere in the region, including the United States," he told CNN in a telephone interview.
But he said cholera was unlikely to spread widely in the United States or in the Dominican Republic, since both countries have public health infrastructures -- i.e., chlorinated drinking water and intact sewage lines -- that are more robust than those in Haiti.
In addition, health officials in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, have been watching the epidemic spread across Haiti for several weeks, during which they have been preparing by putting into place a surveillance system and educating the populace about what to do if they should come down with symptoms, he said.
"We are very hopeful that the magnitude of the cholera problem in the Dominican Republic will not be on the scale of Haiti," Tappero said. "Diligence in public health messaging and people doing the right thing with water and food preparation and managing waste is going to be critical to that success."
In Haiti, the outbreak had claimed 1,110 lives, the health ministry reported Wednesday. Another 18,382 people had been hospitalized with the disease. The hospital death rate was 4.0 percent, far above the 0.0 to 1.0 percent that infectious disease experts said they expect in developed countries.
cont.Haiti reported more cholera deaths Wednesday as chaos reigned in this country's... more
-
-
No, this is not from The Onion....
***********
If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.
That is the conclusion of a mathematical exercise carried out by researchers in Canada.
They say only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the fictional creatures.
The scientific paper is published in a book - Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress.
In books, films, video games and folklore, zombies are undead creatures, able to turn the living into other zombies with a bite.
But there is a serious side to the work.
In some respects, a zombie "plague" resembles a lethal rapidly-spreading infection.
In their study, the researchers from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University (also in Ottawa) posed a question: If there was to be a battle between zombies and the living, who would win?
Professor Robert Smith? (the question mark is part of his surname and not a typographical mistake) and colleagues wrote: "We model a zombie attack using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies.
"We introduce a basic model for zombie infection and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions."No, this is not from The Onion....
***********
If zombies actually existed, an... more
-
-
Everything you need to know about Swine Flu in 30 seconds. Please pass this on to your friends and family.Everything you need to know about Swine Flu in 30 seconds. Please pass this on to your... more
-
-
Have you ever noticed that a smile was contagious? Surround yourself with happy friends and family and you will be happier. Not only are we a product of our own environment, but we may also be influenced by someone else’s environment. Your friend’s brother is happy, so your friend is happy and in turn you are happy. Happiness is contagious and not only to those that we come directly in contact with.
Researchers at Harvard and the University of California in San Diego led a study based on data from the Framingham Heart Study, and measured how social networks were connected with reported happiness. The study showed that happiness truly is contagious and it seems to spread among groups of people almost like a virus. Five thousand people along with their over 50,000 connections with family, friends, co-workers and others were evaluated. They were all asked questions in regards to their subjective feelings of happiness over a twenty-year period. According to the new study released online in the British Medical Journal, we are not the only ones responsible for our happiness. Our happiness is affected by those around us and we can affect many different levels of people we are connected and not connected to. For example, if our happiness feeds to our neighbors, then that happiness could affect our neighbor’s parents, friends, children, co-workers, friends of their children, the grocery store clerk, or the children’s teachers.
Political scientist James H. Fowler a professor at the University of California in San Diego and one of the paper’s authors said, “Happiness not only spreads from person to person but also from person to person to person.” Have you ever had a child look at you and smile or given someone a gift and seen how happy they were? Did you notice how their happiness made you happy? By one person being happy and smiling it seems others around them are more likely to be happy as well. Christakis noted, “Unhappiness spreads, but it doesn’t spread quite as much nor does it spread quite as consistently as happiness.”
Continued here;
http://www.healthnews.com/family-health/mental-health/smile-happiness-is-contagious-2246.htmlHave you ever noticed that a smile was contagious? Surround yourself with happy... more
-
-
An outbreak of ringworm has meant that every horse in the Northumbria Police force has been on sick leave for over a month.
A vet working for the police has said that ringworm is a highly contagious disease but anti-fungal treatment has been working well.
An outbreak of ringworm has meant that every horse in the Northumbria Police force has... more
-
-
ClareW
-
added this
-
3 years ago
- |
-
A BBC investigation has learned that at least 43 female typhoid carriers were locked up for life in a mental hospital in Epsom, Surrey between 1907 and as recently as 1992.
They had recovered from the disease but still excreted the bacterium and therefore were seen to pose a public health risk, and were incarcerated indefinitely.
Nursing staff told the BBC that some of the women may have been sane when they were admitted but went mad because of their incarceration.
Jeanie Kennett, a ward manager, said it was a "basic existence" for the patients.
"They're somebody's loved ones, they're somebody's mother, or sister, everybody had forgotten about them - they were just locked away," she said.
"Life was pretty tough; they were seen as objects, it was prison-like - everything was lock and key."
Can you believe that these kinds of secret incarcerations took place just a few years ago Were the authorities justified in keeping these typhoid carriers away from the general public, even after the advent of antibiotics? Why were no men subjected to the same treatment?
A BBC investigation has learned that at least 43 female typhoid carriers were locked... more
-
-
"Almost 3,000 children in eastern China have now been infected by the deadly Enterovirus 71 (EV71) intestinal virus, according to state-run media.
A child died on Thursday, bringing the death toll to 21, and a total of 2,946 children had been infected by Friday morning, Xinhua news agency said.
The number of children infected with EV71 - which is highly contagious - has risen sharply since the outbreak was disclosed on Sunday. Most of the victims have been children under the age of six."
"Almost 3,000 children in eastern China have now been infected by the deadly... more
-
-
A drug-resistant strain of potentially deadly bacteria has moved beyond the borders of U.S. hospitals and is being transmitted among gay men during sex, researchers said on Monday.
They said methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is beginning to appear outside hospitals in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles.A drug-resistant strain of potentially deadly bacteria has moved beyond the borders of... more
-
-
lib
-
added this
-
4 years ago
- |
-
SMILE OF HOPE" is an independent, non-governmental, non-institutional, non-religious project for global awareness and responsibility with the aim to propel compassion and induce a feeling of hope and better tomorrow to the people / countries in peril. The globe is warming, the Earth is crumbling, nations are starving, people are dying... While there is no simple solution to fight the famine and erase the misery, there is one small thing that ANYONE can do - SMILE :) Pleasant smile induces a similar response. A smile can make others smile - it really is contagious! It can win friends and influence people. "A smile can induce a feeling of pleasure even if the smile is that of a stranger in a photo, as long as it's genuine." (Facial Expressions Are Contagious, Hietanen & Surakka, International Journal of Psychophysiology, 1997) Via the web portal at http://www.smileofhope.com/ participants of this project will be able to upload their smiley photo which will be posted not only on the web as a collective message of hope, but will become a part of an actual, jumbo poster - 4000 faces big - from the people all over the world. The poster will eventually be displayed in the country / city that will benefit from this kind of empathic support the most. Where exactly, is also to be determined by the participants of this project who will give their vote to the country in most dire need. Uploading cost to each participant is only 1EUR per photo, and will be used to cover the expenses and technicalities related to the project. You can do it too! Your smile can make others smile - a smile really is contagious! Make someone's day with your smile - send a smile of hope and connect people around the world! http://www.smileofhope.com BONUS *** FREE mp3 - upload your Smile of Hope photo and get a free download of mp3 track: Bozic dolazi (Santa Claus Is Coming To Town), by Jeshua, a band from Croatia. SMILE OF HOPE" is an independent, non-governmental, non-institutional,... more
-
-
BPmmx
-
added this
-
4 years ago
- |
