Researchers Worldwide Rally to Help Scientist Exposed to Ebola
SciecneInsider has the details surrounding an Ebola researcher who pricked her finger with a needle during an experiment last week. Virologists around the world are collaborating to try to save their colleagues life. An exposure to Ebola from a needle stick does not often lead to infection with the deadly illness, but a group of scientists immediately got together to discuss a long list of experimental vaccines and treatments that could possibly prevent infection or slow progression of the disease. As a result, the exposed researcher was given a vaccine that has previously been shown to provide protection in monkeys who had been exposed to Ebola. The incubation period of Ebola is typically between 4 and 21 days, and it has only been 6 days since the needle stick incident. Thus far there is no indication that the researcher has contracted an Ebola infection, but virologists are anxiously following her case.
A military depot in central Belarus has recently been upgraded with additional security perimeters and an access point that indicate it could be intended for housing Russian nuclear warheads for Belarus’ Russia-supplied Iskander missile launchers.
The Indian government announced yesterday that it had conducted the first flight test of its Agni-5 ballistic missile “with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.
While many are rightly concerned about Russia’s development of new nuclear-capable systems, fears of substantial nuclear increase may be overblown.
Despite modernization of Russian nuclear forces and warnings about an increase of especially shorter-range non-strategic warheads, we do not yet see such an increase as far as open sources indicate.