What are arboviral diseases?

What are arboviral diseases?

Arthropod-Borne Viral Disease also known as Arboviral diseases are “a group of viral diseases that are acquired most frequently when blood-feeding arthropod vectors including ticks, sand flies, biting midges, and mosquitoes infect a human host.” There are four main clinical symptoms or illnesses that are caused by arboviruses, the first being that of acute central nervous system illness. The second symptom is acute self-limited fevers sometimes with a rash present on the body. The third symptom is hemorrhagic fevers with capillary leakage, shock and high fatality rates. The fourth clinical symptom associated with arthropod born viral disease is polyarthritis and rash without a fever and can last for duration of time.

Arthropod vectors such as mosquitoes transmit some of the following illnesses, “In the United States, mosquitoes can spread West Nile virus, California serogroup viruses (California encephalitis, La Crosse encephalitis, and Jamestown Canyon), Eastern equine encephalitis virus, Western equine encephalitis virus, and St. Louis encephalitis virus.” Infections are the highest for West Nile virus and La Crosse virus during the warmer months of the year when mosquitoes and tick are most active.

St. Louis encephalitis is the most commonly transmitted human pathogen in the United States.  “West Nile is a mosquito-borne zoonotic arbovirus belonging to the genus Flavivirus.” This is found in topical and temperate regions of the world. “Approximately 80% of West Nile virus infections in humans are sub-clinical, which cause no symptoms. In the cases where symptoms do occur termed West Nile Fever in cases without neurological disease the time from infection to the appearance of symptoms is typically between two and fifteen days.”

The best and most effective way to avoid West Nile virus is to prevent mosquito bites. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some ways people can prevent themselves from being infected with West Nile virus, “when you are outdoors, use insect repellent containing an EPA registered active ingredient. Also, make sure you have good screens on your windows and doors to keep mosquitoes out.”

http://www.slideshare.net/doctortvrao/arthropod-borne-viruses-part-teaching-1

http://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/communicable/arboviraldiseases/Index.htm

Essentials of Environmental Health: Robert H. Friis

Choosing grades how effective is blogging as a learning tool?

Choosing grades how effective is blogging as a learning tool?

Blogging is a part of many people’s daily lives. Many people possess these blogging skills already by posting to social media sites, they may not see posting to social media as blogging, but essentially it is the same, it is a way of communicating with others over the internet.

Blogging increases student interaction with the materials presented in the course.  Professors assign readings that they ultimately have no control whether the student chooses to read the material or not. Blogging assignments that are required give the students more incentive to get involved and interact and to learn about the subject or topic that is required to be written about.  “As a professor, you have an idea of what the students are thinking before they get to class and the assurance that they have been thinking about the material. That information can help you lead a stronger classroom discussion, one that you know students will take interest in since they helped influence its focus.”

Blogging “as a tool whose use has spread rapidly in the last decade, owing to its advantages of easy-to-use interface and financial feasibility, blogs have great potential to become an effective digital learning tool in both formal and informal learning.”  The learning method of blogging has been showing up around the nation as a learning tool. Blogging has many beneficial aspects that it can contribute to the class room, one for instance being improvement on writing skills. Mark Rom Professor at Georgetown University describes his classroom environment when changing his curriculum to a blogging course, “Mark Rom turned to a course blog to help stimulate class discussion and personal interaction among students. Because class discussion can be intimidating in such a large course, Rom decided to integrate a course blog into his curriculum in order to ensure that all students had the opportunity to engage in meaningful discussion about American politics.”

www.grossmont.edu/.../BlogLitReview_Bockv2.doc‎

http://ii.library.jhu.edu/2013/11/27/using-blogging-as-a-learning-tool/

http://gettingsmart.com/2013/12/benefits-blogging-learning-tool-part-1/

What was the Poison Squad?

What was the poison squad?

Harvey Wiley studied at Indiana Medical College where he received him M.D.  Wiley taught Indiana’s first lab course in chemistry before being offered a position in chemistry at Purdue University. Wiley spent a lot of his time studying sugar chemistry. In 1882 Wiley was offered the position of Chief Chemist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and this was an offer that Wiley was not going to pass up.

Wiley was assigned five thousand dollars in 1902 to “the Bureau of Chemistry to study the effects of commonly used food preservatives on human health, in which the public began to take an interest in federal food regulation.”  The public coined the phrase Poison Squad, after “Wiley referred to his human subject research as the Hygienic Table Studies. Scientists in the Bureau of Chemistry were astonished at the publicity that their work received.”  

“Wiley organized in 1902 a volunteer group of healthy young men, called the Poison Squad, who tested the effects of chemicals and adulterated foods on themselves”, to ultimately see if these men’s health would be affected by any means. “Poison Squad studies were important for many reasons, but chief among them was the fact that they had a profound influence on early food safety policies under the 1906 statute.” After almost three decades President Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drug Act in which a great portion was written by Wiley. Wiley left his position in office to take on a new opportunity that arose, to set up and direct the Bureau of Foods, Sanitation and Health for Good Housekeeping. Taking on this job at the magazine gave Wiley the ability “to continue his fight for pure foods from the pages of the magazine.” Harvey Wiley lived to be 86 years old and was one of the most influential men who made an impact on our health and food industries.

http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/CentennialofFDA/HarveyW.Wiley/default.htm

https://scisoc.confex.com/crops/2012am/webprogram/Paper74525.html

Who was John Snow?

Who was John Snow?

 

John Snow was a British physician who lived from 1813-1858. Snow was best known for his legendary work in public health, specifically epidemiology and anesthesiology. Snow was “one of the founders of epidemiology for his work identifying the source of a cholera outbreak in 1854.” Snow is referred to as the Father of Epidemiology.  

 

Cholera was an infectious and often fatal bacterial disease. It was unknown early on as to what was causing the disease; it was assumed that cholera was airborne. “Most physicians believed that cholera was caused by “miasmas” poisonous gases that were thought to arise from sewers, swamps, garbage pits, open graves, and other foul-smelling sites of organic decay.” John Snow did not believe the theory of the disease being airborne; with the research that Snow had conducted the theory could not be plausible. During this cholera outbreak “Snow began examining sick patients. All of them reported that their first symptoms had been digestive problems. Snow reasoned that this proved that the disease must be ingested with polluted food or water.” With these finding Snow could prove that the “miasmas” theory was just a theory. Snow published an essay titled; On the Mode of Communication of Cholera the essay contained documentary evidence and a reasoned argument that supported his theory.  Many of Snow’s colleagues and peers did not take Snow’s theory seriously. However, “Snow continued to work on his theory that drinking water was the primary means of contagion. He accumulated data that had been collected in the epidemic of 1848-1849 and that showed that patterns of the disease could be linked with specific water supplies.” Snow’s colleagues were still skeptical to his cholera theory, but that did not stop them from giving Snow praise on his findings in anesthesiology.  “Snow conducted translational research that enabled him to understand the mechanisms of vaporizing volatile anesthetic agents, ether and chloroform, so that safe delivery systems of anesthesia could be designed.” He later gave anesthetics to Queen Victoria for the birth of two of her children.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/fatherofepidemiology.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1325279/