Via strategypage:

October 5, 2005: On September 24, 2005, biosensors on the Mall in Washington D.C. picked up the presence of tularemia bacteria during a nationwide protest with over 100,000 people attending antiwar demonstrations and the National Book Festival. At least three sensor locations picked up the bacteria and federal health officials are still testing samples from the BioWatch network sensors distributed around Washington DC that collected the germs.

The detection triggered a number of actions as health and Homeland Defense officials tried to determine if the incident was a bio attack or a false alarm. The Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) nationwide tracking system was used to look for unusual occurrences of pneumonia-like symptoms in every state. D.C.-area hospitals, clinics, doctors, and pharmacies were alerted to be on the look out for possible cases of the disease.

A week after detection, health officials have seen no patterns to indicate a tularemia outbreak, leading them to conclude that there was no intentional release of the bacteria. Instead they believe that the naturally occurring bacteria was “kicked up” out of the soil by the thousands of feet marching on the Mall. A similar alert occurred in Houston in October 2003, where two air sensors picked up fragments of tularemia bacteria.

Tularemia can cause flu like symptoms and is often called “rabbit fever” because small animals are carriers of the disease in rural areas. Widespread in animals, about 200 human cases of the disease are reported each year in the U.S., mostly in the south-central and western states and caused by handing infected small animals or tick bites.

Tularemia is on the “A” list of the Department of Homeland Security’s biohazards, along with anthrax, plague, and smallpox since it was stockpiled by the U.S. and the former Soviet Union as a bioweapon during the Cold War. It can be grown relatively easily and is easily weaponized. Tularemia is easily treatable with antibiotics, but it could be used to incapacitate large number of people if not detected and treated early. Symptoms include a pneumonia-like illness if inhaled, while ingesting the bacteria can cause a sore throat, abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting.

If the event is ultimately determined to be “background noise,” it won’t be the first time that new sensors have been inadvertently been triggered by unforeseen activity. After 911, a rush to put radiological sensors into place to detect a “dirty bomb” caused consternation for medical patients receiving treatment for cancer and various diagnostic tests that involved radioactive isotopes. The sensors picked up the isotope radioactivity, triggering an investigation by law-enforcement personnel. Exact numbers of false alarms aren’t known, but around 16 million nuclear medicine procedures are performed per year, with patients giving off detectable radiation anywhere from 24 hours to 95 days. Doctors are now providing patients with detailed explanations of their treatments along with telephone and pager numbers. – Doug Mohney

Charles N. Brown, publisher and editor-in-chief of LOCUS, the trade magazine of the science fiction field, reports in the September 2005 issue that he got his hands on an advance reading copy of A FEAST FOR CROWS.

High point for the month was reading A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin. Yes, it’s only half the book originally promised. Yes, it’s been five years since volume three. Yes, it only advances the story a bit, but it’s prime. Martin writes the best and tensest high fantasy today. Wow..

A huge success story in an otherwise down time for computer book publishing.

Scottsdale AZ–October 5, 2005–Paraglyph Press announces the publication of a revised edition of its #1 bestseller, Degunking Windows, 2nd Edition (U.S. $24.99, 416 pp, ISBN 1-933097-07-8). The book, written by Joli Ballew and Jeff Duntemann, became a bestseller within weeks of its debut in January 2004. Riding a surge of positive reviews from publications such as Parade Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and the Miami Herald, Degunking Windows eventually reached the #4 position on Amazon’s list of all bestselling fiction and nonfiction books. The book continues to outsell other leading titles on the Windows operating system.

Via strategypage:

October 5, 2005: On September 24, 2005, biosensors on the Mall in Washington D.C. picked up the presence of tularemia bacteria during a nationwide protest with over 100,000 people attending antiwar demonstrations and the National Book Festival. At least three sensor locations picked up the bacteria and federal health officials are still testing samples from the BioWatch network sensors distributed around Washington DC that collected the germs.

The detection triggered a number of actions as health and Homeland Defense officials tried to determine if the incident was a bio attack or a false alarm. The Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) nationwide tracking system was used to look for unusual occurrences of pneumonia-like symptoms in every state. D.C.-area hospitals, clinics, doctors, and pharmacies were alerted to be on the look out for possible cases of the disease.

A week after detection, health officials have seen no patterns to indicate a tularemia outbreak, leading them to conclude that there was no intentional release of the bacteria. Instead they believe that the naturally occurring bacteria was “kicked up” out of the soil by the thousands of feet marching on the Mall. A similar alert occurred in Houston in October 2003, where two air sensors picked up fragments of tularemia bacteria.

Tularemia can cause flu like symptoms and is often called “rabbit fever” because small animals are carriers of the disease in rural areas. Widespread in animals, about 200 human cases of the disease are reported each year in the U.S., mostly in the south-central and western states and caused by handing infected small animals or tick bites.

Tularemia is on the “A” list of the Department of Homeland Security’s biohazards, along with anthrax, plague, and smallpox since it was stockpiled by the U.S. and the former Soviet Union as a bioweapon during the Cold War. It can be grown relatively easily and is easily weaponized. Tularemia is easily treatable with antibiotics, but it could be used to incapacitate large number of people if not detected and treated early. Symptoms include a pneumonia-like illness if inhaled, while ingesting the bacteria can cause a sore throat, abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting.

If the event is ultimately determined to be “background noise,” it won’t be the first time that new sensors have been inadvertently been triggered by unforeseen activity. After 911, a rush to put radiological sensors into place to detect a “dirty bomb” caused consternation for medical patients receiving treatment for cancer and various diagnostic tests that involved radioactive isotopes. The sensors picked up the isotope radioactivity, triggering an investigation by law-enforcement personnel. Exact numbers of false alarms aren’t known, but around 16 million nuclear medicine procedures are performed per year, with patients giving off detectable radiation anywhere from 24 hours to 95 days. Doctors are now providing patients with detailed explanations of their treatments along with telephone and pager numbers. – Doug Mohney

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Posted by wfzimmerman to Proliferated at 10/05/2005 11:20:00 AM

Good reporting from PublishersLunch:

Is Huffington Puffing?
Ariana Huffington continues to play out her big “scoop” on Judith Miller, and has upgraded the Huffington Post’s standard of proof: Yesterday’s third-hand report (”sources tell me that Judy Miller is telling friends”) has been emphatically refined to definitive second or third-hand confirmation. To wit: “Miller has absolutely, positively been telling friends that she has a $1.2 million book deal. Period. The end.”

Yesterday we made the mistake of assuming that Huffington’s “update” on a conversation with Simon & Schuster president Carolyn Reidy was complete and accurate–when it was apparently presented to serve Huffington’s ends, and give the incorrect impression that Reidy was parsing words carefully in her denial.

Reidy tells Lunch: “What I said (but she didn’t put on her site) was that there was no proposal, no discussions about a book, no discussion about money, no p&l created, no offer made, no signed deal. I was trying to be as definitive as possible in telling her her information was 100% wrong (which I also said).”

Reidy “added that we assumed she might want to write a book, and since Alice Mayhew had been her editor, I assumed Alice would be interested in it, but that there had been no discussions at all about it [that Reidy knows of or was involved in] and certainly no money offered.”

Huffington is back at the parsing game today, using an e-mail from Miller’s agent Amanda Urban–”As far as I know, Judy has not written a book proposal, and certainly I have nothing on submission to S&S or any other publisher”–to suggest that this isn’t a real denial since such a project might not be formally submitted or presented as a written proposal.

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Posted by wfzimmerman to What’s New for Book-Lovers at 10/05/2005 05:59:00 AM

A huge success story in an otherwise down time for computer book publishing.

Scottsdale AZ–October 5, 2005–Paraglyph Press announces the publication of a revised edition of its #1 bestseller, Degunking Windows, 2nd Edition (U.S. $24.99, 416 pp, ISBN 1-933097-07-8). The book, written by Joli Ballew and Jeff Duntemann, became a bestseller within weeks of its debut in January 2004. Riding a surge of positive reviews from publications such as Parade Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and the Miami Herald, Degunking Windows eventually reached the #4 position on Amazon’s list of all bestselling fiction and nonfiction books. The book continues to outsell other leading titles on the Windows operating system.

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Posted by wfzimmerman to What’s New for Book-Lovers at 10/05/2005 10:21:00 AM

Publishers Marketplace reports:

Author of the bestselling THE GOLDEN RATIO, Hubble Space Telescope Astrophysicist Mario Livio’s IS GOD A MATHEMATICIAN?, a book that not only examines the power of mathematics to explain the physical universe and more and more of human behavior, but also looks into the controversy about whether mathematics is a creation of the human mind or a virtual world awaiting discovery, to Bob Bender at Simon & Schuster, for publication in 2008, by Susan Rabiner at Susan Rabiner Literary Agency

The answer to the question, by the way, is “yes.” Duh.

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Posted by wfzimmerman to Science Phile at 10/05/2005 07:03:00 AM

Publishers Marketplace reports:

Author of the bestselling THE GOLDEN RATIO, Hubble Space Telescope Astrophysicist Mario Livio’s IS GOD A MATHEMATICIAN?, a book that not only examines the power of mathematics to explain the physical universe and more and more of human behavior, but also looks into the controversy about whether mathematics is a creation of the human mind or a virtual world awaiting discovery, to Bob Bender at Simon & Schuster, for publication in 2008, by Susan Rabiner at Susan Rabiner Literary Agency

The answer to the question, by the way, is “yes.” Duh.

Tom Holtz on the DINOSAUR mailing list shared this gem:

A good day in tyrannosaurid studies! 100 years ago today, the initial description of Tyrannosaurus rex, its junior synonym Dynamosaurus imperiosus, and Albertosaurus sarcophagus was published.

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Posted by wfzimmerman to Science Phile at 10/05/2005 06:48:00 AM

Tom Holtz on the DINOSAUR mailing list shared this gem:

A good day in tyrannosaurid studies! 100 years ago today, the initial description of Tyrannosaurus rex, its junior synonym Dynamosaurus imperiosus, and Albertosaurus sarcophagus was published.