Hungry kids treated for rabies after digging up dog corpses to eat.

Starving youngsters dug up bodies with their bare hands and ate them with rice.

DESPERATE children are being treated for rabies after digging up the corpses of dead dogs and EATING them.

The group of 13 starving kids clawed with their bare hands to get at the rotting animals, who had been put down after being suspected of carrying the disease. 

 They set up a camp fire to cook the corpses and ate them with rice in the poverty stricken Mukdaharn region of north-east Thailand.They quickly fell ill and were rushed to hospital after locals spotted what they were eating. Animal welfare worker Chon Chaiprasit said: ”It’s a terrible situation. Nobody would have expected the youngsters to eat the dead animals. ”The dogs had rabies so they are currently having vaccinations.

”Dog meat is commonly eaten in poorer rural regions of south-east Asia.It is common for dogs to be farmed for food and even skinned alive in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. On Monday dogs were rounded up and beheaded after reports they were rabidly biting each other. 

 While their heads were taken for testing, their bodies were buried in woodland in Khok Sung.Hours later the group of starving children dug up the corpses.Tests on the animals confirmed they had rabies, sparking fears the children would be infected. They were given emergency vaccines while vets set out to give jabs to stray dogs within a two-mile radius in an attempt to avoid the disease spreading. 

Chon added: “There hasn’t been any explanation yet as to why the youngsters ate the dogs but we believe it is because they were hungry and needed food. “They are being treated and we are working hard to contain the outbreak.” Village elder Withaya Thongmaha, 53, said: “Lots of dogs were biting each other and we worried they may have rabies so we called for help.“I heard that at least ten youths had dug up the corpses and eaten the dogs for food.” more

Indian doctors grow new nose on boy's forehead.

Doctors in India have replaced a 12-year-old boy's damaged nose with a new one which was grown on his forehead. Arun Patel's nose was badly damaged and disfigured when he suffered from pneumonia as a baby. The infection damaged the cartilage of his nose, making it difficult for doctors to fix it. A similar operation was carried out in China in 2013 where a man who had damaged his nose in a traffic accident was given a new one. Arun's parents took him to a doctor in their village in the central state of Madhya Pradesh when he suffered from pneumonia soon after his birth. But the treatment made his condition worse and he lost his nose due to extensive tissue damage. More than a decade later, a team of doctors in Indore city decided to conduct a rare four-phased plastic surgery to give Arun a new nose. Dr Ashwini Dash, who led the surgical team, told BBC Hindi's S Niazi that he was "confident that the new nose would work properly like his other organs". He added that the entire operation took about a year to finish. In the first phase, a silicon "tissue expander" was put on his forehead to make space to grow a new nose. Then a special chemical was injected to make the tissues expand. The second phase involved taking cartilage from his chest to create a new nose, which grew on his forehead over three months. The doctors removed the artificial nose in the third phase and implanted it on his face. The final phase involved repairing his forehead. Contributed by BBC NEWS.

RABIES AND GLOBAL TRAVEL.

Scientists/researchers have warned tourist/holiday enthusiast to stay away from animals including bats on such travelling.This advice came on the heels of a lady that died after she was bitten by a dog while on a trip in India for 2 weeks. 

 Rabies is an acute viral infection of the central nervous system. The virus is usually transmitted through a dog bite, and results in at least 40,000 deaths worldwide every year.Around 90% of deaths occur in the developing world,particularly in India, where dogs that roam freely are largely responsible. Rabies is rare in the UK, where just 12 cases have been reported since 1977, 11 contracted abroad and one rare case acquired from a bat in the UK. 

 A team of researchers describe the case of a woman in her late 30s who was admitted to hospital with shooting pain in her lower back and left leg. Three and a half months earlier, she had been bitten by a puppy on a lead during a two week holiday in Goa. It left a slight graze, but she did not seek medical help, and she had not received a vaccination before travelling. 

She was diagnosed with rabies and died after 18 days in hospital. This case serves as an important reminder of the risk of rabies for any traveler to a country where rabies is endemic, even tourists on a short visit to a holiday resort, say the authors. 

 Travelers need to know whether they are visiting a country where rabies is endemic, and that any dog bite must be taken seriously,even an apparently innocuous bite from a pet. The risk can also be reduced by avoiding contact with animals that might be susceptible to rabies. stay away from roaming dogs ,cats or wildlife.

HOW TO FORMULATE FISH FEED WITH WATER HYACINTH.

Water hyacinth: how to use it as fish feed. The need to find alternative protein sources to formulate non-traditional fish diets to overcome the high fish meal prices has resulted in many attempts to replace fish meal partially or completely with various plant protein sources.

 Water hyacinth has been discovered as a viable option according to study carried out by Dr. S. A. Vhanalakar and Dr. D. V. Muley, Department of Zoology, Shivaji University, Kolhapur, India showing the benefits of water hyacinth as fish feed ingredient. 

 Water hyacinth is one of the most highly productive plants filling up a small area within a short time span as is considered the world's worst aquatic weed. It forms dense mats that interfere with navigation, recreation, irrigation and power generation. These mats competitively exclude native submerged and floating-leaved plants. 

 The rising cost and scarcity of fish meal has prompted studies to find alternatives to the fish meal by using locally available and cheaper ingredients of either animal or plant origin. The success of the aquaculture industry depends worldwide on the availability of low cost, high quality feeds to break even. In the past several studies were carried out to look for substitutes for fish meal in the fish feed. 

Fish nutritionists have evaluated alternative sources of plant origin protein in fish diets as partial or total fish meal replacement. Water hyacinth has been found suitable among other options,as it was found to replace the fish meal at various levels of inclusion without any side effects but rather an increase in fish productivity. . 

 The study carried out using the common carp fed for 120 days. : fresh water hyacinth leaves were collected from local water bodies, these were washed thoroughly with water to remove dirt and debris and drained properly before sun drying. 

The dried leaves of water hyacinth were milled , packed in airtight polyethylene bags and kept in the freezer before use. The inclusion of the dried leaves in the feed was at different rates ranging from (0-70%), groundnut cake, rice bran, fish meal, guar gum binder and mineral/vitamin mixture were all added to formulate the feed. 

 Ingredients were mixed until an homogeneous mass was obtained and with the mincer 0.6 mm pellets were prepared, which were immediately sun dried. The dried pellets were broken up by hand into convenient pellet sizes and frozen before feeding the fish. The water hyacinth diet showed the great usefulness as fish feed ingredient and for cost effectiveness. 

The feed with 40% water hyacinth incorporated diet showed best growth performance over all the other inclusion rates, although all the diets containing the water hyacinth leaf powder showed effectiveness as an economic fish feed . 

 Water hyacinth does not have the capacity to replace the traditional fish meal,therefore, it is used as a supplementary fish feed ingredient along with the traditional ingredients; but the incorporation level of traditional ingredients like fish meal, groundnut cake, rice bran etc. was kept at lowest inclusion level. 

 

Water hyacinth can  play an important role in fish feed formulation to overcome high feed prices.

DAY OLD CHICKS AND FOOD SECURITY.

The process of of enhancing the performance of birds is aimed at producing more eggs,bigger chicken , reducing time of rearing and also extending laying periods.The seed for the poultry is the day old chicks,these must be sourced from proven hatcheries to ensure the goals of optimum growth and production is accomplished.Day old chicks must be clean,alert and vaccinated before they are ready for sales.There are a lot of technicalities that goes into hatching these chicks, the most important factor is that the parent stock must be proven,with desired traits before the breeding and incubation phase.The proper setting in incubators with stipulated temperature and humidity will ensure that the purpose of careful selection and breeding are not futile. The selection and breeding are carried out basically to increase productivity.This can be further harnessed by breeding exotic strains with local strains to ensure proper adaptability to environment . Many countries are implementing this practice at Nairobi International Trade Fair once again proved to be the hub of new innovations and technologies in agribusiness. A rooster weighing eight kilos worth Sh2,000 drew crowds at the trade fair.This is almost the weight of a dik-dik antelope and twice the size of a normal rooster. Kukuchic company sales person Nathan Koech said the 11-month rainbow rooster is a dual-purpose breed.The breed is originally from India. Koech said such weight is not ideal for natural fertilization as the rooster might hurt the hen.He said they do artificial insemination.“At five months the rooster is ready for the market,” Koech said.He said they have 20,000 roosters at the Eldoret-based company and sell day-old chicks at Sh100 each. Unfertilized egg costs Sh15. (The star). Call today to order day-old chicks.

SNAKE VENOM USED TO STOP BLEEDING.

In what seems to be an ironic twist 2 scientist have demonstrated the ability of snake venom to stop bleeding even in the presence of anticoagulants.Rice University researchers Jeffrey Hartgerink, and Vivek Kumar developed SB50;an hydrogel. The product a nano fiber an hydrogel called SB50 incorporates batroxobin, a venom produced by two species of South American pit viper. It can be injected as a liquid and quickly turns into a gel that conforms to the site of a wound, keeping it closed, and promotes clotting within seconds.The hydrogel may be most useful for surgeries, particularly for patients who take anti-coagulant drugs to thin their blood. Batroxobin was recognized for its properties as a coagulant -- a substance that encourages blood to clot -- in 1936. It has been used in various therapies as a way to remove excess fibrin proteins from the blood to treat thrombosis and as a topical hemostat. It has also been used as a diagnostic tool to determine blood-clotting time in the presence of heparin, an anti-coagulant drug. The batroxobin combined with the Rice lab's hydrogels isn't taken directly from snakes, Hartgerink said. The substance used for medicine is produced by genetically modified bacteria and then purified, avoiding the risk of other contaminant toxins. read more here;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151026111913.htm

WASTE MANAGEMENT AND POWER GENERATION.

Waste management is a global issue with developing countries having the biggest task.The management technique varies as different methods are used to prevent the environmental pollution and health hazard attached to this menace. The generation of electricity from the waste is a possible route,but the methodology and cost implication has always been an issue; see how a minimal investment in a biogas plant can generate power ,save the environment and generate revenue.See this