Word: strainingly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...mutating as influenza is. We're always just a few random genetic shifts away from a possible pandemic. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last year documented for the first time that one of the many viral components that make up a common flu strain, known as H1--which also happens to be a descendant of the same virus that fueled the pandemic of 1918--was resistant to the popular antiviral drug oseltamivir, a.k.a. Tamiflu. In the flu season--October to May--of 2007-08, 12% of circulating H1 subtypes were resistant to the drug; this...
That means that other medications, like zanamivir, a.k.a. Relenza, or prescribing oseltamivir in combination with other drugs is still an option. But the spread of a resistant strain raises the specter of a pandemic--brought on by a flu virus that is highly contagious and invulnerable to nearly all our medical efforts...
What can we nonexperts do? Get a flu vaccine every year. No shot is 100% effective, but getting vaccinated gives you a good chance of lessening your symptoms--and thus your infectiousness--should you get slammed with the oseltamivir-resistant strain. There's also hope that a promising antibody--which researchers discovered in February--that binds to a nonmutating part of the virus could one day provide lifetime protection in a single shot against practically all versions of the flu. No more annual flu vaccine and no more worries about the next pandemic. Until then, we just have to hope...
...these images, individually so enigmatic and striking, lose their impact and individuality. The reader would need endless patience, not to mention an excellent dictionary, to parse the intricacies of every single poem. That is not to mention the innumerable times when Nilsson’s extravagant similes and metaphors strain the limits even of poetic license. “They left like young autumn octopuses,” she writes of “The Infant Scholars.” Mere originality is not noteworthy. And “originality” so overtly forced is overbearing and dull. Even...
...challenges. At home, it confronts a rapidly aging population and declining birthrate. The number of those aged over 65 is projected to jump from 28 million today to 35 million by 2025, by which time nearly 30% of the population will be elderly. This demographic shift will put enormous strain on corporate Japan, which is running out of workers - something that could be ameliorated by substantial immigration if Japan's leaders were bold enough (none has been) to prepare a traditionally closed society to open itself up. And an aging society will play havoc with demand for medical services...