West Nile Virus: Are Hemorrhagic-Encephalitis-Mosquito Borne Illnesses Spreading Globally

West Nile Virus is a zoonotic arbovirus that belongs to the flavivirus genus, in the flavivindae family of Mosquito-borne viral infections. Approximately 80% of West Nile virus infections in humans have no symptoms.The cases that are symptomatic are called West Nile Fever, in cases without neurological disease. Symptoms may include fever, headaches, fatigue, muscle aches & pain with a general malaise, nausea, anorexia, vomiting, myalgias and rash. Less than 1% of the cases are severe and result in neurological disease when the central nervous system is affected, and that is termed West Nile Hemorrhagic Fever. West Nile Virus infections are at an all time high in the United States, with 5,207 reported cases in the U.S. with 234 deaths. This total is twice as many as for the previous 3 years, 2009, 2010, and 2011, the total of the 3 being 2,453 cases reported, with 132 deaths occurring. Can the rise in the Earth’s median temperature be to blame? The Planet Earth is warming up, and as Global temperatures rise, threats to food s ecurity from decreased crop yields are a distinct possibility.

Some interesting facts to consider.
The average combined global land and ocean surface temperature for June 2012 was 1.13 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average of 59.9 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the fourth warmest June on record. Temperature for June 2012 was the all-time warmest June on record, at 2.34 degrees Fahrenheit above average. The globally-averaged land surface temperature for June 2012 was also the all-time warmest June on record, at 1.93 degrees Fahrenheit above average. Global Warming is happening, witness the Greenland Ice sheet melt-off this year. The Arctic Ocean and the Continent of Antarctica are melting at a frenetic pace as well. But what does this mean for our planet? Let’s look at one potential problem.
Mosquito borne illnesses. The spread of the West Nile Virus in the U.S. has reached epidemic proportions, and proliferation of mosquito borne illnesses like Dengue Fever and Malaria is a cause for concern among the leading health organizations, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, and the World Health Organization, WHO. Now scientist’s and naysayers can debate the causes of Global Warming until they are blue in the face, regardless of its causes, it is happening.

Video Games to Come Under Scrutiny in US Gun Violence Review

Violence in video games and other aspects of pop culture in the U.S. will be among the areas examined as part of an investigation aimed at reducing gun violence in the country. The investigation, headed by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, has been charged with producing proposals no later than the end of January on legislative action the government could take as it seeks to reduce gun violence. Biden's work comes in reaction to the shocking killing last week of 26 people -- most of them small children -- at a school in Newtown, Connecticut. "When it comes to cultural matters, that's an area that bears exploration and is one of the areas that the president hopes will be a topic of the conversation that he wants to undertake," said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, at a televised press briefing on Thursday when asked by a reporter if the study would include pop culture.

Why Pinball disappeared as a default Windows app

If you were a Windows user before the days of Windows Vista, 7, and 8, you may remember that Microsoft shipped its operating system with an included pinball game. That game was called 3D Pinball for Windows – Space Cadet to give it its full title, but more commonly got referred to as 3D Pinball or just Pinball. The last time Pinball was included with the OS was when Microsoft shipped Windows XP. When Vista arrived, it disappeared, and has never been included again. But why? Raymond Chen, software engineer and well-known Microsoft blogger, has cleared up the mystery. It all comes down to source code that was difficult read and devoid of any comments. Chen was tasked with porting millions of lines of code over from Windows XP 32-bit so Microsoft could ship Windows XP 64-bit. That code included Pinball, but it had a collision bug that saw the ball drop through the launcher and off the table, rendering the game unplayable. The game was developed by Maxis several years earlier (it also shipped with Windows 95), not Microsoft, but Chen had to try and fix the bug. In the end, Chen and another Microsoft programmer couldn’t figure out how the game worked just from looking through the source code. And with no help being offered from comments or documentation, they had to give up and carry on porting other things due to time constraints. Ultimately that’s why Pinball got dropped after Windows XP, but it doesn’t mean you can’t still play it! Wondering how to play 3D Pinball now? Apparently if you have Pinball on an old machine you can copy the Pinball folder from the C:\Program Files\Windows NT directory and get it to run on all versions of Windows since Windows XP. It even runs through Wine if you prefer to use Linux. via The Old New Thing