Spain
gregladen | October 8, 2014UPDATE: They killed the dog.
UPDATE: I'm adding this here because it is my current post on Ebola. Thomas Eric Duncan, the person who became symptomatic with Ebola in Dallas, had died at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital (according to news alerts).
A nurse's assistant in Spain caring for Spanish nationals returned with Ebola from West Africa contracted the disease, gaining the dubious distinction of being the first person to be infected with Ebola outside of that disease's normal range in West Africa, Central Africa and western East Africa. There is speculation that she contracted the…
mmckenna | June 15, 2010Via the Journal of the American Medical Association, a report from Spain: the first recorded outbreak, in a Madrid hospital, of Staphylococcus aureus resistant to linezolid (Zyvox), one of only a few drugs still available to treat very serious infections of drug-resistant staph, MRSA. This is bad news.
Background: The M in MRSA stands for methicillin, the first of the semi-synthetic penicillins, created by Beecham Laboratories in 1960 in response to a worldwide 1950s outbreak of penicillin-resistant staph. The central feature of the chemical structure of both penicillin and methicillin is an…
eklemetti | May 11, 2010I an in the home stretch for grading exams, so just a quick update for today:
The evidence of floods from the Eyjafjallajökull eruption, taken on May 1, 2010 by Dr. Joe Licciardi.
Airports now as far south as Spain, Morocco and the Canary Islands are facing closures due to the Eyjafjallajökull ash. The latest London VAAC ash advisory has the ash wrapping around western and southern Europe, which I am sure is making life interesting for routing transatlantic flights into Europe. The flights within Europe don't seem to be that effected according to Eurocontrol - and they have even dropped…
laelaps | April 1, 2010
The partial faces of Anoiapithecus (left), Pierolapithecus (center), and Dryopithecus (right). (Images not to scale)
Our species is just one branch of a withering part of the evolutionary tree, the great apes. Along with the handful of species of chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, we are all that is left of the hominids, and considering the threats our close relatives face we could very soon be the only great apes left. It has not always been this way. During the swath of prehistory ~23-5 million years ago known as the Miocene a variety of ape species inhabited forests through much of…
eklemetti | January 20, 2010Quick news updates for a Wednesday...
The island (and volcano) of Gran Canaria in the Atlantic Ocean. It last erupted in ~20 B.C.
The earthquakes keep coming at Yellowstone - up to a M3.5 in the last 24 hours. Time has already put up an article wondering about whether people need worry about the swarm (there might be other things to worry about before this swarm). YVO's statement on the earthquake swarm seems pretty standard (as it should be): "At this time the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory does not consider the swarm to be unusual and the earthquakes are likely related to tectonic fault…
eklemetti | August 6, 2009In case you don't frequent the NASA Earth Observatory, I thought I'd call your attention to some images they recently posted that are, again, excellent shots of volcanism captured from space.
The current plume from Tavurvur Crater at Rabaul was shot by the MODIS imager on Terra in early August. The plume is mostly made of volcanic gases and steam, but minor amounts of ash are also found - and remember, even small concentrations of ash in the air can be hazardous to aircraft.
Shiveluch has been having a busy summer, with moderate-to-large plinian eruptions produced by the emplacement (and…
eklemetti | April 22, 2009
Satellite image of the island of Tenerife with the main vent of the volcano (El Teide) in the central part of the island.
I will be out of town for the next few days, so I thought I'd leave this thread for breaking volcano news that any of you Eruptions readers notice.
However, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to point out some abysmal science journalism before I go. I mean, I shouldn't have been surprised considering this is from the The Sun(UK), but, come on, could you at least put some effort in?
The article in question pertains to the recent controversy about the level of danger people…
razib | April 14, 2009
The Hapsburgs are one of those royal families who are relatively well known, and in the minds of the public are to a great extent the emblems of the downsides of inbreeding. To painting to the left is of Charles II, king of Spain, the last of the Spanish Hapsburgs, and an imbecile whose premature death at the age of 39 ushered in a period of dynastic chaos which led to the War of Spanish Succession These conflicts between France and other European powers were one of those turning points in history, a sad capstone to the long reign of the Sun King, Louis the XIV. France's position as the…
grrlscientist | October 31, 2007
A fossilized brown hyena, Hyaena brunnea,
which lived in Europe 1.8 million years ago. [Larger view].
An amazing fossil find in the Andalusian savannah in southeast Spain has revealed that a large variety of animal species lived together in that region during the boundary between the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs, 1.8 million years ago. This discovery has so far yielded a remarkable somorgasbord of fossilized remains from at least 24 large mammal species, eight small mammal species, two reptile species and one bird species.
The fossilized remains, found at Fonelas, Spain, were from…