Category: Science

BOOKS: World Without Cats

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  November/December 2012:

World Without Cats by Bonham Richards iUniverse (order c/o www.worldwithoutcats.com),  2012. 315 pages,  paperback.  $19.95.
According to World Without Cats publicity materials,  author Bonham Richards “has a doctorate in medical microbiology from UCLA and did postdoctoral research at the University of Washington.”  He taught biology for 24 years at California State University,  San Bernardino and the Univeristy of Southern California,  and “now resides in Camarillo.” Read more

Spillover: Animal Infections & The Next Human Pandemic

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  October 2012: (Actually published on November 1,  2012.) __________________________________________

BOOKS Spillover:  Animal Infections & The Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen W.W. Norton and Company (500 5th Ave.,  New York, NY  10110),  2012.  592 pages,  hardcover.  $28.95 __________________________________________

Among the very first postings to ProMED-mail,  the listserve for the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases now reaching more than 60,000 animal and human health experts per day,  was an October 1994 letter to The New York Times by Barbara Hatch Rosenberg,  then director of the Federation of American Scientists Biological Program. Read more

More about trials of calcium chloride as chemosterilant for male dogs

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  October 2012: (Actually published on November 1,  2012.)

 

Thank you for your September 2012 article “Trial of calcium chloride to fix dogs succeeds in Nepal,”  bringing attention to calcium chloride dihydrate nonsurgical sterilization,  which I believe has the potential to help dog welfare organizations make their funding go further,  and to spare dogs the trauma of transport and surgery.

Opinions from the Front Lines of Cat Colony Management Conflict

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  September 2012:

RALEIGH,  N.C.–About 80% of feral cat colony caretakers believe feral cat management can be done in a manner that accommodates the concerns of birders, but only 50% of bird conservation professionals share this view, according to a study published on September 6, 2012 by the online science journal PLOS One.Opinions from the Front Lines of Cat Colony Management Conflict, by North Carolina State University wildlife mangement professor Nils Peterson and four colleagues, “began as a class project in Peterson’s “Human Dimensions of Wildlife” course last year,” reported Jay Price of the Raleigh News & Observer.  “The researchers surveyed nearly 600 Americans who identified themselves as cat colony  caretakers or bird conservation professionals affiliated with groups such as the Audubon Society and American Bird Conservancy,” Price summarized. Read more

Trial of calcium chloride to fix dogs succeeds in Nepal

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  September 2012:

YORK,  U.K.–The First International Conference on Dog Population Management concluded in York, United Kingdom on September 8, 2012 with optimism that calcium chloride–which can be made for less than the cost of bottling it–may already be suitable for widespread chemosterilant for use in male dogs.

Recent advances came as a surprise to Parsemus Foundation medical research programs director Elaine Lissner, who has funded calcium chloride trials for several years.  “At the November 2011 Animal Grant-makers meeting,” Lissner told ANIMAL PEOPLE, “we informed other funders about research on calcium chloride dihydrate nonsurgical male dog and cat sterilization, and showed how simple the sterilant is to make, mixing it right at the lunch table.  The Greenbaum Foundation told grantees about it.  But we heard no more about it until August 2012,” when the Greenbaum Foundation reported successful use of calcium chloride by an organization called DREAMS in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal. Read more

New Indian data cuts worldwide human rabies death toll by 40%

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  June 2012:

New Indian data cuts worldwide human rabies death toll by 40%

DELHI,  CHENNAI,  VISAKHAPATNAM–New Indian data on April 29, 2012 cut the estimated worldwide human death toll from rabies by more than 40%,  with global repercussions for street dog population control,  public health,  and disease eradication funding priorities that are just beginning to be felt as rabies control experts become aware of the finding.
Presenting the most recent Indian government statistics on mortality from all causes to the Lok Sabha,  the Indian parliament, Indian health minister Gulam Nabi Azad mentioned almost in passing, after discussing heart disease,  diabetes,  and cancer,  that only 223 human rabies deaths were recorded in India in 2011,  barely 1% of the 2002 government estimate,  and just a seventh of the Indian toll from snakebites. Read more

Progress in equine contraception

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  May 2012:

Progress in equine contraception

  BILLINGS–The American SPCA on April 16,  2012 granted $100,000 to the Science & Conservation Center in Billings,  Montana, maker of the contraceptive vaccine ZonaStat-H.   The grant is separate from an ongoing ASPCA subsidy of $50,000 per year for three years to help advance the center’s work.  “The center, on the ZooMontana grounds, will more than double the size of its training facility,”  reported Zach Benoit of the Billings Gazette. Read more

On the Origins of New Forms of Life: A New Theory

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2012:

On the Origins of New Forms of Life:  A New Theory
by Eugene McCarthy
Free download from:  http://www.macroevolution.netThe March 2012 ANIMAL PEOPLE cover article “Why an ancient armored mammal needs better defenses” transiently mentioned the argument of evolutionary geneticist Gene McCarthy that pangolins and armadillos might be living descendants of stegosaurs and ankylosaurs,  two related dinosaur families whom McCarthy contends were synapsid proto-mammals,  not reptiles.
McCarthy also contends that pterodactyls and pterosaurs were ancestrally related to bats. McCarthy believes that placental mammals emerged much earlier than paleontologists commonly suppose.
In correspondence with ANIMAL PEOPLE, McCarthy has hypothesized that triceratops and the other ceratopsian horned dinosaurs might have been giant chameleons– which,  while a heretical notion,  might be possible within the full context of McCarthy’s ideas about how genetic traits evolve. Read more
1 2 3 4 5 6 … 41