A new man?

So, after being in California for less than a week I met a guy. He has brown hair and blue eyes and his name is Joe. I was at the dog park and he just came up to me. He seemed nice and interested at first, but ended up getting a little too forward as time wore on. I had to tell him that I'm not that kind of girl. No means no. I hope you're all doing well.

Love, Shay (Alison's dog)

Comic #3

Anybody up for a change in career?

Hey everyone,
Thought this was interesting considering this guy was a veterinarian!

American climbing legend decides to retire while still on top

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

By The Associated Press

SEATTLE -- As he reached the peak of his career as one of America's most accomplished mountain climbers, Ed Viesturs figured he'd picked the right time to retire.

"At my age, I think I'm smarter than I've ever been," Viesturs said. "I'm maybe not quite as strong as I've been, but having the smarts and knowing how to function at high altitude compensates for that and that's important."


Viesturs became the first American and 12th climber in history to summit all 14 of the world's mountains higher than 8,000 meters without using bottled oxygen when he reached the summit of 26,545-foot Annapurna in Nepal on May 12.


As he came down, he announced he was turning his back on the sometimes deadly lure of the high peaks to spend more time with wife and three young children.


He doesn't plan any comebacks.


"I have no need or desire to go back to the 8,000 peak again," he said. "Why climb 'em again? There are risks involved. It's obvious. People die in the mountains.


The first person to scale all 14 mountains was Italian Reinhold Messner, who completed the task in 1986 at age 42. Viesturs will be 46 on June 22.


Viesturs says his wife did not pressure him to quit climbing mountains like Annapurna, K2, Shishapangma and Nanga Parbat.


"She's been with me the last 10 8,000 (-meter) peaks," Viesturs said. "She never asked me to quit and she never suggested I quit. But still there's always that question: What if something happens? She had some concerns."


Viesturs isn't done climbing mountains -- just mountains with 8,000 peaks. He doesn't have anything scheduled, but he's looking at some mountains in India and Tibet. And he may even be back on Everest, a mountain he has climbed six times, although he won't be shooting for the summit this time.


Viesturs is leaving as a big-time climber who speaks modestly of his accomplishments.


"No, no way," Viesturs said when asked if he thinks he's the best mountain climber in history. "You know there's a guy, Reinhold Messner, the Italian climber. He was like a mentor or hero to me. I'm not as good as him."


Viesturs earned degrees in zoology and veterinary medicine and worked briefly as a vet before he quit to focus on mountaineering.


He was cautious in tackling Annapurna, known as one of the deadliest of the high peaks. He turned back in 2000 because of bad weather and in 2002 because of avalanches.


He's been fortunate in an endeavor that has claimed many lives. He survived the disastrous 1996 climbing season on Everest, when two close friends died.


"For whatever reason, I was always at the right place at the right time," he said. "We climbed Annapurna and a week later, an Italian climber died where we had climbed. Why did the avalanche occur when he was there rather than when we were there? I have all my fingers and all my toes. None of my teammates were ever injured or killed. Is that luck or planning or being conservative?"




THE PEAKS


Kangchenjunga, 28,169 feet, 1989


Everest, 29,035, 1990


K2, 28,250, 1992


Lhotse, 27,939, 1994


Cho Oyu, 26,750, 1994


Makalu, 27,765, 1995


Gasherbrum II, 26,360, 1995


Gasherbrum I, 26,470, 1995


Broad Peak, 26,400, 1997


Manaslu, 26,758, 1999


Dhaulagiri, 26,794, 1999


Shishapangma, 26,300, 2001


Nanga Parbat, 26,658, 2003


Annapurna, 26,540, 2005


-- The Associated Press

Comic #2

Missing a Llama?

Llama Found Running Wrong Way On Interstate

POSTED: 10:53 am EDT June 13, 2005

LAMAR, Pa. -- Is your llama missing?State police corralled a llama that was reported running east in the westbound lanes of Interstate 80 at the Clinton-Centre County line around 8 a.m. Sunday.Troopers took the wrong-way llama to a farm for safekeeping. They want to return the animal to its owner.

Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Door #1

Hey Everyone,
Here is the door of the clinic for both MJ and Bob.
Send me your door or sign picture and I will keep posting them.

Just in case you missed it!

Hey everyone,
I am posting the article from the Coloradoan about the new workforce expansion act.
Try and find the mistakes regarding students. :)



HANDS-ON: Marci Stille, a veterinarian technician at Colorado State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital, hands a baby alpaca to senior vet student Aleanore Robinson on Wednesday. Most veterinarians specialize in small-animal care.

Vets needed to combat health threats
Bill would encourage public health research

By PAT FERRIER
PatFerrier@coloradoan.com
and NIKOLAUS OLSEN
NikOlsen@coloradoan.com

Many diseases never before seen in the United States are now threatening our shores.

Bioterrorism continues to pose risks to our food and water supplies.

Identifying and understanding the mysteries of diseases that jump from animals to humans and threaten millions of people might depend on teams of investigators who understand more than just the human body.

It will take medical doctors, public health workers and those trained to care for your cat and dog working together to combat threats - SARS, monkey pox, West Nile virus, anthrax, avian influenza and more - that most often start with animals and spread to people, say public health officials.

Yet the number of veterinarians trained in public health is few.

Of the country's 64,867 vets registered with the American Veterinary Medical Association at the end of 2004, only about 1,500 - just more than 2 percent - are listed in public health and preventive medicine.

An additional 2,400 vets work in 15 federal agencies, but 50 percent of them are getting ready to retire, according to the AVMA. And at Colorado's only vet school, about 75 percent of students would rather go into private practice than public health, said Lance Perryman, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University.

That's despite the $52 million CSU's veterinary college spent on research addressing public health issues such as infectious diseases, environmental toxicology issues and responses to potential foreign animal diseases that might be introduced into this country, Perryman said.

Changing the ratio of private practice to public health specialists means changing the way vet schools approach public health, said a former CSU dean.

"There's a great disconnect between what vets are doing in the world of public health and what goes on in vet schools," said Frederick A. Murphy, a professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Medicine at the University of California-Davis and associate dean at CSU's vet school from 1978 to 1983.

Murphy is among those leading the charge for more veterinarians to be trained in public health.

"You have to know what's going on in an animal and how the disease is transmitted," he said. "With something like West Nile virus, you have to know a lot about what's going on in the bird, mosquitoes and humans."

West Nile - first identified by a veterinarian at the Bronx Zoo who linked the death of several crows with deaths of New York residents - infected 546 Larimer County residents and killed 63 Coloradans in 2003, when the state was at the epicenter of the outbreak.

Bill aims to fix the problem

A bill introduced last week in Congress by former veterinarian Sen. Wayne Allard, a graduate of CSU's vet school, calls for $1.5 billion during the next 10 years to expand the size of vet schools and increase the number of vets trained in public health and biomedical research.

For the purpose of Allard's bill, public health is defined as areas such as bioterrorism and emergency preparedness, environmental health, food safety and security, regulatory medicine, diagnostic laboratory medicine and biomedical research.

"If we're going to combat these diseases, vets are the people we need in these jobs," said Melanie Fuller, deputy legislative assistant to the Colorado Republican.

Gina Henriksen, a fourth-year veterinary medicine student, said she almost picked public health as an undergraduate major. "I like the detective work of figuring out how a disease spreads out and how it got started."

She said she would have been interested in a public health/veterinary medicine major had it been available.

Lauren Afsahi, a third-year veterinary student, said she also would have been interested in a combined program.

"I would definitely be interested in going into public health. I think it is important for the public to know how these diseases are transferred from animals."

Failure to deal now with public health threats spread by animals could cost well beyond the $1.5 billion in Allard's bill if there were an outbreak of diseases such as SARS or foot-and-mouth disease, Fuller said. "It seems silly not to be well-prepared for it," she said.

Hope alone that such an outbreak would not play out in the United States will not safeguard animal health, the nation's food supply, public health or the U.S. economy against intentional or accidental bio- and agri-terrorism, the AVMA wrote in a statement supporting Allard's bill.

"An ample supply of well-trained veterinarians will be needed ... first responders in cases like these ... to help ensure the health of America's animals and people and the safety of its food supply," the statement said.

If Allard's bill is approved, CSU plans to compete for grant money to expand and renovate its facilities and add six new seats to its veterinary class.

CSU - which offers some dual degrees in veterinary medicine and disciplines such as microbiology - is ahead of most vet schools, Murphy said.

It already leads the nation's 27 vet schools in funding from the National Institutes of Health: $34 million. All of that is used to look at how "what we learn in animals can be used in human health," said CSU's Perryman.

CSU has performed more than 85,000 tests on cattle for the presence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy - also known as mad cow disease - through a partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

And it's involved in rabies surveillance, detection and prevention of West Nile virus, and testing for chronic wasting disease, Perryman said. While mad cow disease has sickened humans with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, chronic wasting disease has not crossed the species barrier into humans.

Perryman, who supports Allard's bill, said CSU wants to "implement a strategy to attract new vet students committed to public health careers." That could include expanding and adding dual degree programs in veterinary medicine and public health.

"It would enable us to offer degrees where students are skilled and instantly ready to enter the job market as public health officials," he said.

The principles of animal and human medicine are the same, Perryman said. "We just happen to focus on every species other than humans."

David White, who got his doctor of veterinary medicine and a doctorate in microbiology from CSU in 2000, is at the forefront of studying zoonotic diseases - those spread from animals to humans.

White, 34, is one of 82 veterinarians working for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nina Marano, associate director for Veterinary Medicine at the CDC, said veterinarians there are working on diseases such as Marburg virus in Angola, bioterrorism threats and rapid response, parasitic diseases like avian influenza, anthrax, and many diseases of which most people have never heard.

White said he started out wanting to go into private practice but got hooked on research into zoonotic diseases.

The combined program added about 3½ years to his studies and a considerable amount of debt.

"But this is where I can really make a difference and do so very quickly," he said, referring to the CDC, where he works in the highest-level containment lab, the place where workers dress in space-like suits to avoid contamination.

White calls it his dream job, though it's in Atlanta and not his native Colorado.

"I'm doing high-impact basic research that I've always wanted to do. My medical background provides background that other researchers don't have."

The CDC has long acknowledged that many emerging public health threats start with animals.

With only 82 veterinarians out of 9,000 CDC employees, the number "is not enough," Marano said.

She blames both the veterinarian schools and society. "The only model most students see that causes them to want to become vets are small-animal practitioners" - the vets who care for your cat, dog, horse, bird or even lizard, Marano said.

In this interconnected world and global marketplace, about 75 percent of emerging zoonotic diseases are new ones "we are discovering for the first time or coming to new parts of the world," Marano said.

White, for example, is working on the Lassa fever virus and other viral hemorrhagic fevers spread by rodents.

While Lassa fever, prevalent in Nigeria, might sound like a disease confined to far-off shores, a New Jersey man was diagnosed with the sometimes fatal disease last year.

He brought it home after traveling to Nigeria.

Fortunately, White said, the man was quarantined and treated early, and the disease did not spread.

The case demonstrates the ease with which diseases once contained to a geographic area can spread worldwide by just a handful of travelers, White said.

In Larimer County, health officials are particularly concerned about the possibility that avian influenza, or bird flu, will come over from Asia.

The virus, which can spread to humans, has led to more than 50 deaths and the culling of 2 million birds, according to news reports.

Officials fear a strain will come to the United States and spread before they are able to contain it, leading to a pandemic that could kill thousands or more, said Dr. Adrienne LeBailly, director of the Larimer County health department.

Indonesian scientists have found a pig infected with bird flu. Pigs can act as mixing vessels, LeBailly said, meaning they can be infected by a human virus and bird virus, resulting in a new strain that can infect humans efficiently.

"Whether there's an epidemic in Asia or something else that arises somewhere else, there will be a new strain of flu caused by a bird gene that no one has seen before," LeBailly said.

She also praised the work veterinarians do on behalf of public health.

While Northern Colorado has not seen an increase in the number of veterinarians going into public health, it is a trend throughout the nation, she said.

Like White, most of the veterinarians at the CDC also have advanced training in public health, Marano said.

Attracting more vets to the field, White said, will take a combination of more educational support, generating good jobs and a funding mechanism to create labs that allow for high-impact research.

One such lab is already up and running in Fort Collins.

The CDC in August broke ground on an $80 million, 155,000-square-foot facility in Fort Collins to study vector-borne diseases, including West Nile and bioterrorism threats.

CSU also started construction in November on a 34,000-square-foot facility near the new CDC lab. The university got $22.1 million from the NIH to expand its infectious disease research. The new lab will work in conjunction with CSU's Rocky Mountain Institute for Biosecurity.

Allard's bill is a start in training more specialized veterinarians, AVMA President Bonnie Beaver said in a statement.

"The present shortage of veterinarians in public practice areas endangers the public health system in the United States," Beaver said. "We don't want to look back at this opportunity and say 'We should have taken action.'"

Watch out!

Police arrest killer cow

Fri Jun 10,10:04 AM ET

Nigerian police have arrested a cow that killed a bus driver who was urinating on a highway, a police spokesman said Thursday.

The horned African cow, which was wandering stray in the Ojo district of Nigeria's biggest city Lagos, also injured several bystanders after killing the man.

"The cow went mad, ran into a bus driver and knocked him down. Efforts to revive him were fruitless," said Lagos police spokesman Olubode Ojajuni.

Some people suggested the animal be shot, but the district police officer ordered it to be taken alive.

"You know what it will take to arrest a mad cow?" one newspaper quoted a policeman as saying. "We applied ingenuity and arrested the cow, which is now being detained at the station," he said without going into details.

Ojajuni said police were seeking the cow's owner to press charges for failing to keep it under control.

Oops!

Cats use fax as toilet, spark Japan house fire

Fri Jun 10, 6:55 AM ET

Two kittens picked the wrong place to relieve themselves when they urinated on a fax machine, sparking a fire that extensively damaged their Japanese owner's house.

Investigators in the western city of Kobe have concluded that the fire in January was caused by a spark generated when the urine soaked the machine's electrical printing mechanism.

The fire damaged the kitchen and living room before it was put out by the house's owner, who was treated for mild smoke inhalation, said Masahito Oyabu, a fireman at the Nagata fire station in central Kobe.

The kittens quickly ran to safety, he added.

"If you have a cat, or a dog for that matter, be careful where they urinate," Oyabu said. "Especially keep them away from electrical appliances and wires."

Dog Collar alert

Howdy again,
Thought I would post some stuff on dog collars. There are two articles posted.
Here is the video
Patrick

Dog Bio-Security Systems: collars that text you alerts


You know we love Aibo, but we can appreciate some of the finer points of having a flesh and blood dog, and it isn’t just taking it on long poopwalks and having intimate meetings with every fire hydrant and street sign on the block. No, we’re talking about the level of home protection only a Shih Tsu can provide. So if you’ve already gotten your dog the Dog-e-Tag, SNIF, or The Fido, you might also consider Bio Sense Technologies’ new DBS (Dog Bio-Security System) collar, which supposedly detects the anxiety and urgency of barks, and translates and communicates to a base system which sends SMS alert messages. The video is a little janky and doesn’t exactly leave us convinced, but what’s the worst that could happen? You don’t get a text message you wouldn’t have gotten anyway?

Dog collars to detect prisoner escapes
Here's another gizmo that analyzes dog barks and senses the dog’s emotional state.

An an Israeli-based startup called Bio Sense Technologies is giving the venerable guard dog an upgrade with an electronic collar that can monitor a dog for signs of anxiety such as raised fur or a racing heartbeat, which dogs often exhibit before they bark.

The collar can also interpret different types of dog barks, and can distinguish barks signaling a threat from other types. When the collar registers such activity, it sends a signal back to a home base, which can distribute alerts via e-mail or cell phone.

In tests in an Israeli prison, dogs equipped with the Bio-Sense collars detected 93% of simulated prisoner escape attempts, compared with 30 to 40% otherwise.

An MPEG video showing the system in action is available here.

Interesting?

PETA Complains As Revised SAT Tested On Chimpanzees



Hey everyone,
Ok so this is from the Onion but I was thinking that they should have chimps try out the NAVLE as well. What do you think?
Patrick

German woman with 43 goats

Talk about a collector!

German woman lays waste to property with 43 goats
Tue Jun 7, 3:11 PM ET
A German woman living with 43 goats was evicted from her rented house after the animals left "knee-high" piles of droppings around the garden and laid waste to the building's interior, authorities said on Tuesday.
A court in the southwestern town of Saarburg said the woman had been forced out because she was behind on her rent and had allowed the condition of the house to deteriorate to such an extent that it may have to be torn down.
"The goats' droppings were basically piled up knee-high around the garden, and inside the house everything was chewed up. And it stank," said court spokesman Manfred Grueter.
"It was total chaos," he added. "It's pretty doubtful as to whether the place can still be lived in."
The woman, a freelance artist in her early forties, had resisted eviction on the grounds her life with the goats had been used to create a "social sculpture" inspired by the German sculptor Joseph Beuys.

New Cow in Town

Hey everyone,
Just thought this was interesting about water buffaloes.

New cow in town
Water buffaloes in Woodstock ride exotic dairy trend

SOUTH WOODSTOCK — They came from Michigan, Florida, North Carolina and as far away as California to talk water buffalo.

The American Water Buffalo Association held its annual meeting this weekend at Star Hill Dairy, the first and only water buffalo creamery in the country.

The dairy started milking the unusual breed in 2003 and making the famous buffalo mozzarella cheese shortly afterward. It also makes a brand of yogurt under the brand name Woodstock Water Buffalo, featuring many Vermont-inspired flavors such as maple, honey or black currant.

UConn Vet School

Another possible school like Texas Tech?

UConn weighing plans for veterinary school

Associated Press

June 2, 2005

STORRS, Conn -- The University of Connecticut is considering adding a veterinary school, which would be the second in New England if established.

A board of trustees committee listened to various options on the topic Wednesday. Among them was a consultant's report indicating it would cost between $35 million to $95 million to build the school for 100 students. It could take up to $14 million a year to operate, the report said. Other reports suggested partnerships with an existing veterinary colleges.

Dr. Andrew Maccabe, associate executive director of the Association of American Veterinary Colleges, told the trustees there is a high demand for certain types of veterinarians. He cited a need for veterinarians in infectious disease work, food security and biomedical research.

The only other veterinary school in the region is at Tufts University in North Grafton, Mass.

LCMV infection

Just in case you didn't read it and get questions about it!
More information about this disease at http://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/lcmv_rodents.htm

Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis Virus Infection in Organ Transplant Recipients --- Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 2005

On May 3, 2005, CDC received a report of severe illness in four patients who had received solid organ transplants from a common donor. All four organ recipients subsequently were found to have evidence of infection with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), a rodent-borne Old World arenavirus. Preliminary findings from the ensuing investigation indicate the source of infection likely was an infected hamster in the donor's home. This report summarizes the ongoing investigation and provides information on exposure risks and possible prevention measures.

In early April, in Rhode Island, a woman with a medical history remarkable only for hypertension and 1 week of headache had sudden onset of hemiplegia caused by a stroke, followed by brainstem herniation and brain death within 3 days. A thorough evaluation was not suggestive of infection.

Family members of the woman consented to donation; organs and tissues were recovered, including the liver, the lungs, both kidneys, both corneas, and skin. Within 3 weeks after transplantation, the four persons who received the liver, lungs, and two kidneys had abnormalities of liver function and blood coagulation, and dysfunction of the transplanted organ. Signs, symptoms, and clinical laboratory test results varied in these patients and included fever, localized rash, diarrhea, hyponatremia, thrombocytopenia, hypoxia, and kidney failure. Three of the four organ recipients died, 23--27 days after transplantation. The fourth patient, a kidney recipient, survived. Histopathologic findings varied in the four cases, but hepatocellular necrosis was common to all three decedents on autopsy. The two cornea recipients were asymptomatic. Skin was not transplanted.

When the cause of illness among the recipients was not identified through extensive diagnostic testing and suspicion of transplant-transmitted infection arose, tissue and blood samples from the donor and recipients were sent from the Rhode Island Department of Health and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to CDC. LCMV was identified as the cause of illness in all four organ recipients; diagnosis was made in tissues from multiple organs through immunohistochemical staining, reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (i.e., IgM capture and indirect IgG), and viral culture on Vero E6 cells. Sequencing of the virus genome confirmed its identity as LCMV. Based on the diagnosis of LCMV infection, the surviving kidney transplant recipient was treated with intravenous ribavirin and reduction in his immunosuppressive drug regimen; the patient improved clinically