Pennjoe's blog

Novartis has been awarded a nearly 41 million dollar contract to supply the US with enough vaccine to inoculate 20 million health care, emergency official and high level government officials against the possibly mutating H5N1 bird flu virus. Government official want to stockpile the drug to prevent the possible spread of any mutant strain that would cause the much feared pandemic in the news of late.

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Microsoft was ordered in March, 2004, by the European Union, to disclose information about how Windows*communicates over a network. The deadline imposed by the EU was November 23, 2006 and Microsoft has provided data, and now it is up to the EU to decide whether Microsoft has fulfilled the courts order.

The March, 2004 ruling was imposed to force Microsoft to disclose information to third party and competitive companies that develop software to be used with Windows*. The EU is hoping major software developers such as International Business Machines (IBM), Cisco and others will assist in determining if Microsoft has met the requirements of the antitrust lawsuit settlement agreement.  Read More »

HONG KONG- Chinese scientists have identified a gene in the H5N1 bird flu virus which they say is responsible for its virulence in poultry, opening the way for new vaccines.

There are many different strains of H5N1, some of which kill more than half the people they infect, while others do little or no harm.

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WASHINGTON - Doctors and parents should watch for signs of bizarre behavior in children treated with the flu drug Tamiflu, federal health officials suggested Monday in citing an increasing number of such cases from overseas.

Food and Drug Administration officials still don't know if the more than 100 new cases, including three deaths from falls, are linked to the drug or to the flu virus _ or a combination of both. Most of the reported cases involved children.  Read More »

 London, England  - A joint research by scientists from the Institute of Ophthalmology and the Institute of Child Health in London and the University of Michigan Medical School in the United States, has shown that transplantation of late stage photoreceptor cells at the retinal area could reverse the blindness caused due to eye diseases such as Macular Degeneration (MD) in the elderly.

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Replikins, Ltd. has completed a comprehensive quantitative analysis of H5N1 "bird flu" peptide sequences found in humans infected with H5N1 in the past nine years.

The data, obtained from public sources, included 1,455 complete sequences from human specimens. The company has found a continuous and statistically significant increase in the concentration of peptide sub-sequences (previously linked to epidemics) in the H5N1 virus over the past nine years, suggesting a heightened potential for an epidemic outbreak in humans. The replikin concentration in H5N1 has been found to rise steadily, by a factor of 2.5 over the period covered, from 1997 to 2006, from a mean count of 1.9 to the current count of 4.8 units per 100 amino acids (Replikin Count(TM)).

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NEW ORLEANS - Investigators are waiting on autopsy results after a student was found dead in his University of New Orleans dorm room Monday night.  The university closed part of fifth floor of the dorm while police investigated the cause of death.

But police said the body may have been in the room for five to seven days.  Read More »

A communications student was found dead in his dormitory room at Indiana University of Pennsylvania on Sunday night, according to the Indiana County coroner. State police found the body of David Matthew Kearns, 24, in Thomas Hall after his father called to say he had been unable to reach him by phone all weekend.

An autopsy and toxicology tests are planned for Monday, but the coroner said the death does not seem to be suspicious.  Read More »