Word: infects
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...believed to stimulate viral replication. In fact, the virus is missing so much of this particular gene--known as nef, for negative factor--that it is hard to imagine how the gene could perform any useful function. And sure enough, while the Sydney virus retains the ability to infect T cells--white blood cells that are critical to the immune system's ability to ward off infection--it makes so few copies of itself that the most powerful molecular tools can barely detect its presence. Some of the infected Australians, for example, were found to carry...
...scientists are enthusiastic about testing the proposition by injecting HIV--however weakened--into millions of people who have never been infected. After all, they note, HIV is a retrovirus, a class of infectious agents known for their alarming ability to integrate their own genes into the dna of the cells they infect. Thus once it takes effect, a retrovirus infection--unlike those of viruses that cause measles, smallpox and any number of other diseases--is permanent. While some retroviruses are benign, others can strike without warning. Some remain hidden for years, only to trigger disease later in life when...
...Patten and the British government realize that a more independent legislature would be a powerful bulwark against Chinese political interference after the takeover. And perhaps they hope that a bit of democracy can find its way into the China-bound cash flow. If Hong Kong's capitalist ideals can infect the mainland, why can't democratic ones...
...agencies are also dabbling in hacker warfare. The National Security Agency, along with top-secret intelligence units in the Army, Navy and Air Force, has been researching ways to infect enemy computer systems with particularly virulent strains of software viruses that already plague home and office computers. Another type of virus, the logic bomb, would remain dormant in an enemy system until a predetermined time, when it would come to life and begin eating data. Such bombs could attack, for example, computers that run a nation's air-defense system or central bank. The CIA has a clandestine program that...
Scientists, who once believed that Ehrlichia attacked only dogs and horses, now know that at least two species of Ehrlichia can infect humans. One causes HGE, and the other causes a disease called monocytic Ehrlichiosis, a flulike illness first identified in the western hemisphere nine years ago. HGE is spread by the deer tick in Northern states, while monocytic Ehrlichiosis is a mostly Southern syndrome that travels in the Lone Star tick. The disease is found in 30 states, including Texas and Oklahoma. More than 400 cases of monocytic Ehrlichiosis, nine of them fatal, have been documented since...