Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is one of the most widely distributed tick-borne diseases in the world, ranging from southern Russia and the Black Sea region to the southern tip of Africa. It is caused by a virus which is transmitted to humans by ticks, and is considered as “emerging” across the globe, with countries such as Albania, Turkey, and Georgia reporting new infections in humans in recent decades. Human CCHF infection has also been recently reported after long periods of absence in some locations, for example in south-western Russia and Central Africa. The main genus of ticks that transmit CCHF to humans (Hyalomma ticks) are adapted to warmer and dry or semiarid environments, and are found in many parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe. In addition to humans these ticks feed on wild and domesticated animals, which can also become infected with CCHF virus but which do not show any disease symptoms. However, infection of these animals leads to further CCHF transmission to humans, as new ticks feed upon these animals and become infected.  Read more

Why is it that we all know that red, green, and blue are primary colors, but nobody knows a set of primary odors? Why is it that every smartphone user can now pull out their phone, take a picture, send it to a friend halfway across the world nearly instantaneously, archive it nearly indefinitely, and look at it repeatedly with no degradation using only a device connected to a power source, but none of this is currently possible in olfaction? One reason is that color vision uses three types of receptors to detect all of the colors we see. Taste comes in an order of magnitude higher – with somewhere around 40 receptors.  Read more