How flu is spread

Pubblicato il 13/02/2013Read time: 1 min

Avoiding close contacts with infected people could not be enough as a defense against flu. This is the conclusion of a recent study by scientists at the Wake Forest School of Medicine, published on the Journal of Infectious Diseases. The swab specimens of 94 subjects, admitted to the hospital with influenza-like illness, have been analyzed and their medical history recorded, revealing that 61 of them were actually positive for flu. Researchers then collected air samples from each patient, looking for infectious particles. This allowed to discover that 26 of them released virus particles into the air, with 5 being highly infectious, emitting up to 32 times more virus than others. Patients who reported severe illness and major interference with daily life also emitted more influenza virus.
These results thus seem to question the conventional wisdom that flu is mainly spread through close contact with others and by touching contaminated surfaces.

http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/01/29/infdis.jis773.abstract

Autori:

Sezioni:

Dossier:

Indice:

Influenza

prossimo articolo

Carnivorous plants can be a source of inspiration for new materials

di Stefano Zapperi

di Caterina La Porta

Pubblicato il 05/09/2019

Drosera capensis. Wikimedia.

Technology and applied sciences

Carnivorous plants can be a source of inspiration for new materials with specific mechanical properties, according to researchers from the Centre for Complexity and Biosystems (CC&B) of the University of Milan. In a paper recently published on PNAS– and selected for the journal’s cover –they analysed the mechanics by which one of these plants, Drosera capensis, folds its leaves around insects trapped on their sticky surface in order to digest them.