Browsing: Virus

That’s right people, all the life on this beautiful planet (yep, that includes you) could descend from alien zombies. Well, this is indeed a slight imagination leap, but what I’m talking about are viruses; dead viruses, to be more exact. Dead viruses who contained information, enough information to pave the way for lifeforms to appear. […]

Scientists working for the UN reported today that they have erradicated the Rinderpest virus, a virus that is deadly for cattle. Rinderpest would be only the second virus erradicated by mankind, after smallpox. It caused massive damage in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, having a survival rate of only 10-20%. The UN’s Food and […]

For years and years (good) doctors have warned about the dangers of taking antibiotics too lightly, which generally causes ‘bugs’ to be more resistant. More recently, a study conducted by researchers from Boston University showed that microbes are a lot like us: what doesn’t kill them makes them stronger, and this could have extreme consequences. […]

The koala population has been going down for quite some while now, mostly due to habitat loss and the lack of laws to protect them, but now it seems they have a really, REALLY big problem. It’s recently been reported that koalas from the Queensland area (and not only) are dying from the spread of […]

Photo by out of rhythm A recent study has shown one of the world’s most dangerous viruses, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) unprecedented detail. They analyzed just the sexually transmitted version. Scientists found that among billions of HIV variants only a few lead to sexual transmission. George M. Shaw, M.D., Ph.D., professor in the UAB […]

Viruses are sub-microscopic infectious agents that need other cells in order to reproduce. In fact, some scientists claim that viruses are not living beings, as they do not meet the criteria of the definition of life, because they don’t have cells; but they do have genes and evolve by natural selection. Still, they […]