Dengue fever's growing range and virulence

Emory disease ecologist Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec writes about the growing threat of the dengue virus, for the journal Future Microbiology:

We are still losing our global battle against dengue virus (DENV). After half a century since the beginning of its rampant spread, and despite decades of continued vector control efforts, DENV has re-emerged to become the most important human mosquito-borne viral infection. Currently, approximately 70–100 million cases of classic DENV infection are reported every year (most of them in tropical and subtropical countries), with an estimated 2.1 million cases of life-threatening disease in the form of Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever/Dengue Shock Syndrome. Over the last two decades, the number of dengue fever epidemics has increased exponentially, and the dramatic range expansion of the endemic and hyper-endemic areas is indisputable. Moreover, the global incidence of Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever and Dengue Shock Syndrome has increased 30-fold since the 1950s, and both severe manifestations are a leading cause of hospitalization in parts of Southeast Asia.

Increases in human population, rapid and unplanned urbanization, and human travel have contributed to the resurgence and spread of DENV infections. However, it is the inadequacy of our current tools to combat the virus carrying mosquito vectors and the virus itself, together with our limited understanding of the biological, social and behavioral dimensions of virus transmission that have contributed most to our inability to contain this dengue pandemic. New approaches, tools, and methods for dengue control and prevention are desperately needed.

Read the whole article in Future Microbiology.

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Passionate ecologist seeks outdoorsy date

Emory biology student Tom Quigley wants a date, and he wants it bad. Can you recommend him?

He’s wooing the Sierra Club’s Best Internship on Earth. Quigley is among 25 semifinalists from across the country vying for $5,000 in gear and cash, and a summer job making videos of Sierra Club outings.

Check out his video application, above. (Don’t miss this bonus track of him playing acoustic guitar and singing "Little Lion Man.”)

If you think Quigley’s got what it takes to treat nature right, go to the Sierra Club site and leave a comment for him.

Psychologists closing in on claustrophobia

By Carol Clark

We all move around in a protective bubble of “near space,” more commonly known as “personal space.” But not everyone’s bubble is the same size. People who project their personal space too far beyond their bodies, or the norm of arm’s reach, are more likely to experience claustrophobic fear, a new study finds.

The study, to be published in the journal Cognition, is one of the first to focus on the perceptual mechanisms of claustrophobic fear.

“We’ve found that people who are higher in claustrophobic fear have an exaggerated sense of the near space surrounding them,” says Emory psychologist Stella Lourenco, who led the research. “At this point, we don’t know whether it’s the distortion in spatial perception that leads to the fear, or vice versa. Both possibilities are likely.”

Everyone experiences claustrophobic fear to some extent, but there is a wide range of individual differences. About 4 percent of people are estimated to suffer from full-blown claustrophobia, which can cause them to have panic attacks when traveling through a tunnel or riding in an elevator. Some people seek medical treatment for the condition.

Photo: iStockphoto.com

“Increasing our understanding of the factors that contribute to claustrophobia may help clinicians develop more effective therapies for what can be a highly debilitating fear,” says Matthew Longo, one of the study’s co-authors and a psychologist at Birkbeck, University of London.

Claustrophobia is often associated with a traumatic experience, such as getting stuck in an elevator for a long period. “However, we know that some people who experience traumatic events in restricted spaces don’t develop full-blown claustrophobia,” Lourenco says. “That led us to ask whether other factors might be involved. Our results show a clear relation between claustrophobic fear and basic aspects of spatial perception.”

Neural and behavioral evidence shows that we treat space that is within arm’s reach differently from space that is farther away. “It makes adaptive sense to be more aware of things that are closer to the body, for both utilitarian purposes and defensive ones,” Lourenco says. “It also makes adaptive sense to be afraid of things that are too far away from you on the vertical dimension, since there can be a great cost to falling.”

In ongoing work, Lourenco and Longo are investigating how the range of individual differences in spatial perception relates to fear. They are asking normal research subjects, who are not seeking treatment for claustrophobia or acrophobia (the fear of heights), to estimate various distances.

While the subjects who have higher levels of claustrophobic fear underestimate horizontal distances, those who have more acrophobic fear overestimate vertical distances. “One intriguing possibility is that these two types of fear may form opposite ends of a single spatial-perceptual continuum,” Lourenco says.

Related:
How babies perceive numbers, space and time

Get ready to flash your intelligence

You’re working late in a downtown Atlanta skyscraper. You realize that you are all alone in the building. You glance out the window: Below you see hordes of people start moving chaotically, then spontaneously flow together into an orderly stream.

Don’t be a bystander. It’s time to put on some sensible shoes and listen to those voices in your head. Sign-up to join a science flash mob of hundreds of people demonstrating how molecules evolve and self-assemble.

The first “Group Intelligence” flash mob begins on the Emory Quad next Thursday, April 14 at 7 pm. Group Intelligence will spread to downtown Atlanta’s Woodruff Park the following week. From there, it’s going national and to Europe.

It’s all part of the daring convergence of science and art brought to you by Out of Hand Theater and the Center for Chemical Evolution. The center is a collaboration of Emory and Georgia Tech, funded by the NSF and NASA.

Click here to join Group Intelligence. Remember: It takes a diversity of molecules, and people, to ensure our survival.

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Windstorm reshapes Atlanta forests

Atlanta is known for its mammoth trees, which create a forest atmosphere in some metro areas. Monday’s violent storm felled many of these giants in and around the city, killing six people, damaging property and taking out power.

The storm took down 40 trees on the Emory campus. The university has some of the best-preserved hardwood forests in the Piedmont province of the Southeast. When large trees are downed by storms, it’s part of a natural process of clearing out old growth, explains Carl Brown, adjunct faculty in environmental studies.

Hal Jacobs, who writes the blog Quad Talk, spoke with Brown next to Mizell Bridge and the Carlos Museum. Check out the beautiful scenes of campus forest in his video, above, including a great shot of a hawk.

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Warning to campus squirrels
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How a hike led to a math 'Eureka!'