A veterinarian on field trip!!!

Veterinarians and field trips, this was one of such days and guess how it all started, a calf came calling in the parking lot The field trip in pics,

Celebrating veterinary excellence.

The center of excellence,Lagos State Government recently appointed a veterinarian as the permanent secretary primary health care board,in the person of Dr. Olalekan Allison. 

The former director of veterinary services Lagos State Ministry of Agriculture has indeed broken a record as he is the first veterinarian to be appointed as permanent secretary.

 Celebrating veterinary excellence,join me!!! More

3D Printing and Music and heart project.

Polish DJ Piotr Bejnar is using 3D printed bracelets to capture fans heartbeats, and then using them as bass beats for his live set. The inspiration, explains Bejnar, came from working at a small venue. “There was this show with so little space on the stage that I had to play surrounded by the dancing crowd, ” says Bejnar. “I felt how their pulse affected the music I was playing, and then I thought to go even further. To create music together with the audience. Live.” Bejnar believes there is a musical instrument within all of us — the heart. He explored how to create music from this natural drum, and came up with the idea of using it as a bass beat for his live set by accelerating and slowing the rhythm. His experiment involved friends whose heartbeats he could add his own sounds to in order to create music. He said: “I only needed a technology which allowed me to play with the audience’s heartbeats during the concert in a club.” From this idea, Bejnar’s friend was able to create 3D printed bracelets which could measure people’s heartbeats and send the information wirelessly to the DJ’s console.continue

Animal Avengers Use 3D Printing to Save Victoria the Goose.

The Animal Avengers continue in their mission to preserve wildlife; Victoria the goose has a 3D printed beak so she can eat and drink again.In 2015, Victoria the goose was discovered on the São Paulo coast missing a large part of her beak. Unable to eat or drink, she was rushed to the nonprofit organisation, Friend of the Sea. Friends of the Sea, which cares for hundreds of marine animals every year, contacted a group called the Animal Avengers. The team comprises of four vets, a dental surgeon, and a 3D designer, who work on creating prosthesis for injured animals. ALL 3DP covered their exploits previously with Freddy the tortoise and Hanna the Labrador puppy. Victoria is the first goose in the world to receive a brand new 3D printed beak, and she is now expected to be able to lead a normal life.Continue

Drones and medical care.

A company called Vayu,has designed a drone to help bring medical care to remote places was successfully used to deliver clinical blood and stool samples from rural villages in Madagascar to a central laboratory for testing. There were numerous flights conducted to prove the viability of using the technology on a regular basis over hilly terrain. The Vayu drone takes off vertically, but flies horizontally, having combined characteristics of a quadcopter and a fixed wing airplane. It requires no runway and is designed to be fully autonomous once its destination is entered, landing on parking lots, roofs, and any other flat surface. It is capable of hauling 4.5 lbs (2 Kg) for approximately 40 miles (60 Km) and there’s already work underway to extend the range closer to 60 miles (100 Km). It was used to send samples to the clinic,but it can equally bring blood, drugs, and other light medical supplies on the return trip. continue

Yellow Fever Outbreak In Southern Africa.

Angola and neighboring countries in Southern Africa have been combating an outbreak of yellow fever while the U.S is dealing with Zika virus. Yellow fever was once the most feared epidemic in the world before mass vaccination campaigns were implemented in the mid-20th century. The disease is now taking a toll on a new generation in Southern African nations. Yellow fever is caused by an RNA Flavirus, the same genus that includes the Zika, dengue, and West Nile viruses. Transmission occurs from humans to humans and monkeys to humans by mosquitoes of the Aedes or species. Yellow fever has three transmission cycles. The jungle cycle occurs when mosquitoes transmit the virus from monkeys to humans who are working or visiting jungle areas. The intermediate or Savannah cycle in Africa occurs when mosquitoes transmit the virus from monkeys to humans or humans to humans living or working in areas bordering jungles. The urban cycle occurs when mosquitoes like Aedes aegypti transmit the virus between humans usually by a person infected in the jungle or Savannah setting who then carries the disease to an urban area. People infected with the yellow fever virus are asymptomatic. The incubation period is generally between 3 to 6 days. The symptoms include fever, chills, severe headache, back pain, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue. About fifteen percent of cases will progress to a more severe second phase of the illness with symptoms including high fever, jaundice and bleeding. Death occurs from shock and failure of multiple organ systems. There is currently no treatment for yellow fever. Instead, symptoms are managed clinically under close observation. The epidemic was first detected again in the Angola’s capital city, Luanda, in late December of 2015 and the first cases were laboratory confirmed on January 19, 2016. As of July 15th, 2016, there have been 3,682 suspected cases reported in Angola, 877 of which are confirmed and 361 deaths from the disease. Suspected cases are widespread across the country, having been reported in 16 of the 18 Angola provinces. The outbreak has also erupted in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a neighboring country of Angola, where there are 1,798 suspected cases and 85 reported deaths. Additionally, Kenya and China have reported traveled-related cases of yellow fever. The outbreak is of international concern because despite the vaccination of 15 million Angolans, local transmission is still occurring. Cross-border travel also poses a risk of further spread of the virus to other nations. There is also speculation about locally transmitted cases in hard to reach areas, such as the province of Cabinda. In Angola and the DRC, vaccination campaigns are underway to prevent the spread of this infectious disease, but a global vaccine shortage poses a life-threatening challenge to containing transmission of the virus. The current yellow fever outbreak, as with Zika and Ebola, underscores the need for global pandemic preparedness to both prevent and respond to the continuing threat of infectious diseases around the world.contributed by HuffingtonPost

Depression genes found by tapping crowd-sourced data.

Scientists have discovered 15 genome sites — the first ever — linked to depression in people of European ancestry. Many of these regions of depression-linked genetic variation turn out to be involved in regulating gene expression and the birth of new neurons in the developing brain. The researchers analysed data already shared by people who had purchased their own genetic profiles via an online service and elected to participate in its research option. This made it possible to leverage the statistical power of a huge sample size to detect weak genetic signals associated with a diagnosis likely traceable to multiple underlying illness processes. This novel use of crowd-sourced data was confirmed with results from traditional genetics approaches in the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health. Roy Perlis, M.D., M.SC, of Harvard/Massachusetts General Hospital — a grantee of the NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) — was the main contributor to the reports. The researchers adopted a strategy of studying much larger samples than had been used in the earlier genome-wide studies. They first analysed common genetic variation in 75,607 people of European ancestry who self-reported being diagnosed or treated for depression and 231,747 healthy controls of similar ethnicity. This data had been shared by people who purchased their own genetic profiles via the 23 and Me website and agreed to participate in the company’s optional research initiative, which makes data available to the scientific community, while protecting privacy. The researchers integrated these data with results from a prior Psychiatric Genomic Consortium genome-wide-association study, based on clinician-vetted diagnoses of more than 20,000 patients and controls of European ancestry. They then followed-up with a closer look at certain statistically suspect sites from that analysis in an independent 23 and Me “replication” sample of 45,773 cases and 106,354 controls. Continue