The Kriy8 Blog

Global Warming to Raise Disease Risk for Animals? Changes in climate can increase infectious disease risk in animals, researchers found -- with the possibility that these diseases could spread to humans, they warn. The study, conducted by scientists at the University of Notre Dame, University of South Florida and University of Wisconsin-Madison, supports a phenomenon known as "thermal mismatch hypothesis," which is the idea that the greatest risk for infectious disease in cold climate-adapted animals -- such as polar bears -- occurs as temperatures rise, while the risk for animals living in warmer climates occurs as temperatures fall.The study, published in the journal 'Science', supports a phenomenon known as "thermal mismatch hypothesis," which is the idea that the greatest risk for infectious disease in cold climate-adapted animals -- such as polar bears -- occurs as temperatures rise. The hypothesis proposes that smaller organisms like pathogens function

   Another Pandemic for Kerala ? Here's the "Nipah Virus"! As the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, researchers have found the presence of a different kind of coronavirus -- bat coronavirus (BtCoV) -- in two bat species from Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu, according to a first of its study by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).   The deadly Nipah virus kills nearly 75 per cent of the people it infects, but the circumstances under which the bat species, known as the Indian flying fox, transmits the virus to humans has remained a mystery. Now, a six-year, multidisciplinary study has revealed how the Nipah virus, which claimed the lives of 17 people in Kerala in 2018, spreads among fruit bats -- findings which can help predict when the pathogen may spillover to humans.  The Nipah virus is an illness that is transmitted to people from animals, and can also be transmitted through contaminated food or directly from person-to-person. I