On his fascination with the small and lethal

I keep, almost reflexively, reading dribs and drabs on filoviruses—that extremely odd and tiny virus family including only Ebola and Marburg—the hemorrhagic fever viruses.

Dunno what it is about me. Always had this fascination with the small and extremely deadly. I used to (I kid you not) have posters of space-filling models of some of the more alarming organochlorines in my room in university—including, of course, the uber-nasty 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin.

In my defense, that is an awfully pretty molecule—easily, with its two big aromatic rings and the two oxygen bridges, far prettier even than the lovely caffeine molecule in the background of this page. Really must see about ray-tracing one.

Getting back to the filoviruses: I'm not so sure I want a poster of those on my wall. Impressive little things, I guess, but so not pretty, in so many ways.

Intriguing, though, all the same. Let's see: negative stranded RNA, replication strategy as yet poorly understood (unlike certain other viruses using the same essential genetic structure), pleomorphic (meaning they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes), with overlapping genes (meaning, oddly, certain regions of RNA within the virus genome code for more parts of more than one peptide—a feature not unique to the family—there are actually regions like that even in human genomes). Their primary target seems to be the macrophages (important cells in the host's immune system).

And, of course, they liquify your insides.

Researchers are still working on just how it is they do that¹. Found this paper suggesting a mechanism: essentially, the thought is the macrophages and monocytes (white blood cells) disperse the virus through the body, and it's the combined destruction of these and the endothelial cells (the cells making up the insides of blood vessels) that creates the final, messy liquification of the host. Some of the endothelial cells are lysed (broken open; it's a thing all viruses do to cells in order to replicate themselves), which greatly weakens the walls of the blood vessels, and when all the monocytes and macrophages are themselves lysed by the viruses within them, a lot of terribly toxic stuff gets dumped into the circulatory system—breaking down whatever integrity the blood vessels had left.

At which point, things melt. Messily.

In a word: yikes.

In other news, that Marburg outbreak in Angola is now the most lethal of the Marburgs. 127 confirmed dead, out of 132 infections, as yet.

The good news: the WHO say they think it's controllable.

Crossin' my fingers for them.

¹ Actually, now that I look at it, it appears that, really, confidence that this is the essential mechanism seems quite high now. See Nature's article, new today.

Pricing the deck chairs/lyrical doomsdays

Reading Nature's bit on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment's report this week, I'm amused that the first paragraph, in the time-honoured traditions of that august journal, dutifully reports the intended principal thrust of the assessment's research and conclusions on the value of pricing damage to the productivity of the environment into economic modelling...

As opposed to the leads in the popular press, which, in my ever so humble opinion, actually cut much closer to what you'd think would be one of the more arresting aspects of the findings.

To wit: 'we're fucked'.

Okay. No, no single paper has yet quite used that lead. Or at least not verbatim. But The Guardian's Tim Radford was typical in selecting his focus, here, which comes close enough:

The human race is living beyond its means. A report backed by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries—some of them world leaders in their fields—today warns that the almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on Earth is being degraded by human pressure.

— Two-thirds of world's resources 'used up', The Guardian

Mind you, to Nature's credit, they do get to the 'we're fucked' part by the second paragraph.

Yeah, I'm still on the doomsday thing. Honestly didn't mean to be, but I bought a Globe and Mail yesterday because I wound up eating lunch alone, and the report on the millennium assessment was spread across much of page three.

As I said, I'm a bit amused by Nature's focus given the results, even if, yes, this focus is what the researchers themselves recommend as a solution—pricing the environment in.

But then, they've got nothing on me. Listening to Ronald Wright's masterful lecture yesterday—the third in the Massey series I mentioned in the last post—specifically to his description of the deforestation of Easter island—a story with obvious and previously noted ramifications for our own civilization—I'm struck, as much as anything, by the sheer lyrical beauty of his delivery:

We might think that in such a limited place, where, from the height of Terevaka, islanders could survey their whole world at a glance, steps would have been taken to halt the cutting, to protect the saplings, to replant. We might think that as trees became scarce, the erection of statues would have been curtailed, and timber reserved for essential purposes, such as boat-building and roofing. But that is not what happened. The people who felled the last tree could see it was the last. Could know with complete certainty that there would never be another. But they felled it anyway.

All shade vanished from the land, except the hard-edged shadows cast by the petrified ancestors, whom the people loved all the more, because they made them feel less alone.

For a generation or so, there was enough old lumber to haul the great stones and still keep a few canoes seaworthy for deep water. But the day came when the last good boat was gone. The people then knew there would be little seafood, and, worse, no way of escape. The word for wood, rakau, became the dearest in their language. Wars broke out over ancient planks and worm-eaten bits of jetsam. They ate all their dogs, and nearly all the nesting birds, and the unbearable stillness of the place deepened with animal silences.

— Ronald Wright, from the third lecture in 'A short history of progress'

Yep, that's just me: give me so dark and frightening a tale, with overhanging, ominous portents for my own future and that of my children, and my first response is: 'Wow... you said that so beautifully'.

In my defense, it seems to me that if your civilization is gonna go the way of the Dodo, at least you deserve to have the story of its passing so beautifully written.

Harbinger of doom, special midweek edition

Yeah, I know, I'm breaking my own protocol here. It's Wednesday, but there are apocalypses a-plenty out there...

And this thing's about so much more than merely the end of the world. It's got this whole sweep of human history thing going, from the dawn of the palaeolithic down to the end of last week. A chilling take on cro magnons, neandertals, and a possible stone age genocide... and a truly great speaker: one Ronald Wright—trained as an archaeologist, though more often a novelist, these days.

I'm speaking of the 2004 Massey lectures. They're replaying them on CBC's Ideas this week.

And though you've missed the first and second lecture, by the time you've read this, (i) you can still get the first one via a RealMedia stream at the link above, and (ii) whether or not you're actually in Canada, if you tune your internet audio streaming widget of choice (I use xmms and the Ogg Vorbis stream... sadly, all the rest of the streams seem to be Windows media, which is doable on Linux, but icky) to any of the webcasting CBC stations at 21h00 (station time, so that's 21h00 ET for the Ottawa and Toronto stations) all this week, you can get the remaining instalments.

Quite the perspective, quite enjoyable. Dunno how I missed it the first time.

Sexy beasts

Well, it's got arachnid mating behaviour and sex toys. This is so my thing. From Pharyngula's deliciously explicit Spider Kama Sutra:

...it's also true that spiders are awfully sexy beasts. They are playful and romantic and kinky and enthusiastic and ferocious and savage and exotic, and really know how to have a good time...

Wow. Does that sound like a great date or what?

Sadly, I hear, not many of them are into chordates.

Anyway. From the same post, the sex toy angle. Which, given this blog's mission statement, I am now obligated to pass on:

...the only sex shop proprietress nicknamed after an arthropod that I know, flea of the most excellent weblog One Good Thing, is having a spot of financial difficulty, as I learned on Bitch, Ph.D.. You can help out by browsing their online store, the Honeysuckle Shop, and picking up a few items for your courtship rituals... Take a look. Think like a horny spider...

Whew. And just when I thought I was gonna have to drop the sex toy bit outta my titles for lack of material (and let's face it, that just wouldn't be good for ratings). Thanks PZM.

Monday we're-all-a-gonna-die blogging

... I think I've decided my repetitive blog/meme thing is going to be the 'Monday we're-all-a-gonna-die' feature. Sure, it's not as cute as Bob Harris' pudublogging, or Rox Populi's dangerously catchy Friday random ten... But it just seems like more my thing.

And seein' as the Marburg virus outbreak in Angola has now been reported as having spread to the capital (Luanda, a city of 3 million), it's nothing if not timely.

Marburg, for you folk who may not remember your nasty pathogens so well, is a hemorrhagic fever virus and filovirus—see the CDC site. This variant seems to be a fair bit nastier than the one the CDC knows—the fatality rate so far in the current outbreak is at least 90%.

The fact that it's a virus of that particularly nasty stripe in an urban area isn't unprecedented; Ebola's been into settlements of half a million without the officials losing containment. But it is, obviously, I guess, frightening news.

Good thing my daughter knows her classics

... or I'd probably never actually get to the orchestra.

Brought the slightly-less-little one to the NAC Saturday to hear the orchestra do a young peoples' concert—theme was 'middle Europe', so it's Bartok, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, some folk pieces.

If it weren't for my daughter (really, more my wife, who schedules these things) I'd probably never actually see an orchestra live. Apart from this thing, it's been something like five months now since I out to such a thing. And that's probably better than average, of late.

It was pretty good. Pinchas Zukerman actually came out, did a few things. Quite got into it... Only drawback to the whole episode: my daughter hissing with hauteur and embarrassment:

'Dad! They don't do that lighter thing here!'

Yeah yeah, okay. Obvious joke. Apologies. It's Monday. Still warming up.