Ibuprofen can help 'disable' Ebola and prevent infection.

In what is being hailed as a significant breakthrough in the battle against the deadly Ebola virus, researchers have found an unlikely treatment source - an everyday ibuprofen painkiller. Using Diamond Light Source, a light 10 billion times brighter than the Sun, the team was able to analyse the structure of the Ebola virus at a far higher resolution than had previously been possible. The researchers found ibuprofen, as well as cancer drug Toremifene, were able to bind to a protein on the surface of Ebola, preventing infection. The team described this as being able to "disable" the virus. Further work will be needed to analyse the structures of both the virus and the drugs, as well as how they interact, but the team is hopeful the research could be built upon to develop anti-Ebola treatments. "These complex structures reveal the mechanism of inhibition and may guide the development of more powerful anti-EBOV drugs," the team wrote in Nature. No drug has yet been developed that can stop Ebola. Nearly 11,000 people died of the disease in West Africa alone, with 30,000 infected. Many victims have since been infected with post-Ebola syndrome, which has lead to loss of sight and sickness. Contributed by wired.co.uk

Super bugs,games and antibiotic resistance.

A new game aims to raise awareness of the growing threat of superbugs - antibiotic-resistant bacteria that could cause serious health problems for humanity in the near future. Developed by Preloaded, Superbugs puts players in charge of battling rapidly mutating bacteria in a Petri dish. As cells replicate, you administer doses of antibiotics to wipe them out, leaving only the resistant red cells. Gameplay consists of keeping the dish clear, while a timer counts down on new drug research to wipe out the stronger strains. Chillingly, given the game is meant to mirror the real-world battle against superbugs, defeat is inevitable, as bacteria multiplies and mutates faster than research - or you, as the player - can keep up with. The mobile game launches in partnership with the Longitude Prize, a five-year challenge with a £10 million prize fund which aims to solve the problem of global antibiotic resistance. Make no mistake, this is a major challenge facing the world's healthcare authorities. At the end of 2015, bacteria resistant to colistin were discovered. As colistin is considered a "last resort" for treatment of strains that have grown immune to other antibiotics, this is a significant problem. Without constant research and development of new drugs, some projections forecast up to 10m deaths per year by 2050. "We know our daily behaviours - like sharing and overusing antibiotics - can lead to bacteria becoming drug-resistant, so it's really important we increase awareness around this huge issue," said Longitude Prize spokesperson Tamar Ghosh. "It's especially important to reach young people and games like this are a fantastic way of doing that." Superbugs, available now for Android and iOS devices, is aimed at improving basic scientific understanding of how bacteria mutate and become drug-resistant, while reinforcing how small changes in human behaviour - such as proper consumption of prescribed antibiotics - can slow their spread. Superbugs takes the complex science behind the spread of antibiotic resistance in bacteria and models it as a casual mobile game that's not only great fun to play but scientifically sound," said Phil Stuart, Creative Director of Preloaded. "Games are the perfect medium to reach millions of people and make complex ideas understandable." The Longitude Prize launched in 2014, seeking ideas on how to tackle the rise of drug-resistant bacteria - ideally, "a diagnostic tool that can rule out antibiotic use or help identify an effective antibiotic to treat a patient." While Superbugs alone won't do that, the hope is it gets more people thinking about the problem - and a solution. Contributed by wired.co.uk

Dog flung from roof survives.

Police in southern India have arrested two medical students, an inspector said on Wednesday, after video of a stray dog being flung from the balcony of a two-storey building went viral, sparking outrage. The footage shows one of the students beaming as he lifts the dog by the scruff of the neck to a ledge before tossing her over. The other student is thought to have filmed the incident. An animal rights activist later found the dog injured but alive. According to police, the students said during questioning that they threw the dog and filmed it "just for fun". Police in Tamil Nadu state arrested the pair, who are final-year students at a medical college in the state capital Chennai, and a local court on Wednesday granted them bail. A cash reward of 100,000 rupees (£1,000) was offered by the Humane Society International, an animal protection group, to “anyone who is willing to volunteer valid information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for this evil”. The animal, which in the video lands with a thud and is heard to cry out with pain, was thought to have perished. The animal activist Shravan Krishnan posted an image of himself holding the dog, found alive, late on Tuesday. The dog was found cowering under a staircase of the building on Tuesday as police questioned residents of the residence about the perpetrators, said Mr Krishnan. When called upon to come and check on the dog and take her for treatment. We confirmed she was the same dog [because in] the video [it] looked like she was a female dog, there is a small black patch on her tail, her hind legs are injured and she wasn’t able to move properly. Contributed by the telegraph.

China, Taiwan brace for super typhoon after dozens killed in flooding..

China was bracing for a super typhoon on Thursday after weeks of heavy rain killed dozens and submerged huge swathes of the country in floods. Typhoon Nepartak, which is barrelling towards Taiwan after packing winds of up to 163 mph on Wednesday, is expected to make landfall on the island early on Friday before heading towards China later in the day. The super typhoon is set to add more misery to “an already perilous local flood situation” in China, Xinhua news agency said, as the country grapples with its worst flooding since 1998. A total of 186 people have been killed since last Friday, the China Daily newspaper said, citing authorities. China's Ministry of Civil Affairs said 41 people are missing, almost 50,000 houses collapsed and more than 1.6 million people have been relocated. Taiwan’s defence ministry said they had put 35,000 soldiers on standby for the typhoon, while flights have been cancelled and schools and offices shut. Meanwhile, authorities in the eastern provinces of China were bracing for heavy rain and strong winds, cancelling ferry and train services while fishing boats were being ordered to return to port. The central city of Wuhan has reportedly experienced its heaviest rainfall on record and has been put on red alert by authorities, the highest of China’s four tier weather warning system. Large parts of the city of 10 million people have been cut off and some residents are trapped in their homes. Li Keqiang, China’s Premier, visited Wuhan on Wednesday and called on soldiers to ensure that embankments along the Yangtze River were secured. Neighbourhoods along the 3,900 mile river have been threatened after water levels rose alarmingly. The China Daily said Mr Li, who was wearing a military-style camouflaged raincoat, had told soldiers “the lives of millions of people would be in peril” if the embankments were breached. The flooding had led to alligators escaping from the Crocodile Lake Ecological Resort in Wuhu, Anhui province, on Wednesday. "More than 90 escaped and I don’t know many have been recaptured - but I can’t say all of them,” said an employee, who was surnamed Zuo, on Thursday. “But they are Yangtze alligators, which have a good temper,” he told The Telegraph. “They won’t attack people, intentionally." Contributed by the Telegraph .

Rescue operation to save 6,000 pigs from flooding in China .

A rescue mission to save 6,000 pigs from severe flooding district. Two farmers in Anhui province were photographed breaking down as they looked at their pigs struggling, up to their snouts in water. Their farm lies near the banks of the Yangtze River, which has overflowed after days of heavy rainfall. It appeared that the pigs would become victims of the floods, which have killed more than 100 people and caused severe property damage in communities along the river. According to local media, though, the public outcry led to the pigs being rescued. A local organisation visited the farm and managed to save the pigs, according to Anhui News. Flooding in the river basin has left 112 people dead or missing in recent days, state media said on Tuesday, with more damage feared from a typhoon expected to make landfall within days. Some 16 million people have been affected by heavy rains that have left vast areas under water near the Yangtze, China's longest river, the Beijing News cited the civil affairs ministry as saying. Water levels in Taihu Lake, close to Shanghai, are at their highest level since 1954, it said, adding the area faced a "serious" risk of flooding if a typhoon hit nearby on Friday. Flooding is common during the summer monsoon season in southern China, but rainfall has been particularly heavy this year and many areas have been lashed by torrential rains this week. China's national observatory issued an orange alert for storms across the country's south and east last week - the second highest warning in a four-tiered system. Whole villages were levelled and at least 98 killed in the eastern province of Jiangsu last month after the region was hit by a storm with hurricane-force winds and the worst tornado in half a century. Floods have also hit South Asia this week, with 33 killed in Pakistan and 25 left dead in India after unusually heavy rains. Contributed by the Telegraph

Farms and animals decimated in China flooding.

Severe flooding has decimated a region west of Shanghai, killing as many as 130 people and millions of animals while damaging $5.7 billion worth of crops, Reuters reported. The rain over the past week forced 1.3 million from their homes in Anhui. Aside from the loss of crops, the flooding reportedly killed 7,100 hogs, 215 bulls and 5.14 million fowl, according to the China News Service. The reported death toll varied. The BBC reported more than 180 dead and at least 45 missing. Dozens reportedly died in a mudslide in Guizhou Province. "Our country’s flood control work has entered a critical stage. For the next step, the state authorities will make plans based on the most adverse situation,” the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said in a statement on its website. China's State Television showed images of rescue efforts, damaged areas, and urban areas swamped by water. According to China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, rainfall since late-June has destroyed 22,000 houses and forced 726,000 to relocate in provinces including Jiangsu, Hubei, Henan and Sichuan. Water in 43 rivers has exceeded warning levels and authorities have sent workers to patrol the river dykes, said Chen Guiya, an official with the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission. China's meteorological authority renewed its orange alert for heavy rain in the south and southwest of the country on Monday. China has a four-tier color-coded system for severe weather, with red being the most serious, followed by orange, yellow and blue. Contributed by Foxnews and Associated press

Precision agriculture and unmanned tractors.

Cory Anstey always wanted to be a farmer. It was the joy of riding in the tractor, "the smell of the dirt in the spring" that drew him to the fields. Anstey, 44, is also a bit of a techie. Luckily for him, modern agriculture lets him embrace both of his passions. Anstey started using GPS technology in his machinery about 15 years ago and now even lets his tractor steer itself across his fields. "It's very addictive, once you've had it," he tells me while taking a break at the 21st Century Cooperative, a mechanic shop/gas station/grain elevator in Cumberland, Iowa. Known simply as "the Co-op," the dusty office with grimy floors is the most popular hangout in this town of 250 people. It's here where farmers, many clad in overalls and boots, gather to drink pop (soda, for those not in the Midwest), snack on popcorn and gossip -- which includes chatter about the latest machines. As farmers work more acres with the same -- or even less -- manpower and bigger, more unwieldy machines, they're increasingly turning to technology for help. But it's not the usual tech suspects like Google or Apple inventing a better pitchfork; instead, traditional agriculture machinery manufacturers like John Deere and New Holland keep stepping up their innovation. Self-driving tractors are commonplace (the farmer still sits behind the wheel). Sensors can detect everything from what the machine's doing to what the crop conditions are. Farmers can monitor the progress of planting and harvesting from their iPads, and tractors serve as their own mobile hotspots. It's a skewed reflection of our own increasingly connected world, except farmers have used many of those technologies, like auto-steering and GPS mapping, since the '90s. It used to take years for farmers to figure out the condition of their land. Today, a farmer doesn't need much institutional knowledge about the field he's working -- his tractor knows all, thanks to GPS mapping. Location tech manages three quarters of the acres farmed in Iowa, Darr said. Mapping technology talks to sensors in the machines, letting farmers track what's going on at each location, like yield and moisture level. You can see the info on a display built into the tractor, like a big GPS display. The data gets saved in the cloud and can be accessed on computers and tablets. Many farmers even mount iPads in their tractors as second monitors. The saying about real estate is location, location, location," said Ron Zink, John Deere's director of onboard applications. "It's the same with precision ag. You need to know exactly where you are." Planters have auto-shutoff technology that uses GPS to make sure a farmer doesn't accidentally plant an area twice, saving seeds, fuel and time. They can be nearly perfect in spacing seeds apart from each other, compared with only about 60 percent accuracy with planters from 10 years ago, according to Darr. Farmers can follow their yield in real time as they harvest their fields or go back to the data later. And the machines themselves collect information like the temperature of the engine, the amount of fuel used and the location of that machine, letting farmers repair and maintain equipment. contribution by cnet.com