Look at the absence of amygdala:
A rare, brain-damaging virus that experts consider a possible epidemic threat has broken out in the state of Kerala, India, for the first time, infecting at least 18 people and killing 17 of them, according to the World Health Organization.
The Nipah virus naturally resides in fruit bats across South and Southeast Asia, and can spread to humans through contact with the animals’ bodily fluids. There is no vaccine and no cure.
The virus is listed by the W.H.O. as a high priority for research. Current treatment measures are insufficient, according to Dr. Stuart Nichol, the head of the viral special pathogens branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
The W.H.O. has not recommended any travel or trade restrictions for the region.
These things are all cooking out there, and people deal with them with an assumption that they will be contained, and not be a problem. This is a virus which has transmitted person to person, it kills almost everyone it infects, and it is in a nation of 1.3 billion that floods people out to the rest of the world.
When the big one hits, it will hit first in universities. Major universities are filled with foreigners from the third world, many who travel regularly between their homelands and the US. And those Universities are filled with young people who are sleep deprived, eating poorly, stressed with heavy coursework and grade curves, a lot of gays are in that university world, and all of the students packed together tightly which will make for easy spread of any pathogen which makes it into their populations. My advice is, if you or anyone you love are in a University, be ready to split at the first sign of trouble. Better to miss a week of classes, than become a statistic in the next pandemic.
This apathy will continue until one hits, at which point all of these will be dealt with much more aggressively at the outset. Until then, we are just waiting for the pandemic.
re: “…stressed with… grade curves.” AC
I thought curving grades was a stress reliever.
Years ago I recall at a top 20 in the world university an applied math graduate level course titled Numerical Methods. Over 125 grad students took the course and all were Ph.D. candidates except for two Masters candidates. After drop date there were about 75 left in the class. Final grades were brutal: 2 A level ones, 5 B level, 14 C level, and the rest failure as below a C level one received no credit. That class was stressed by not having grade curving.
Dan Kurt
I generally disliked curves because you never knew where you stood. When you know each molecular biology class has an average test score between 18 and 30 out of 100, and you are in that range, you have no idea if you are high enough on one to give you space on another. In my case, it felt like running on a treadmill, because you just went all out, all the time, and never knew if it was enough until the entire class was over, and the curve was applied.
Personally I’d much prefer a class where you either learn the materials, or you don’t. The whole throw 1000X units of info at people, when the best can only absorb 100X, and then not tell anybody where they are or where everyone else is, until the final grades are issued, wasn’t my favorite way to learn.
Really, physical sites are becoming obsolete for much of what universities used to be doing. There is no reason to be on campus except for very targeted, specific things, like conducting experiments in a lab or something like that. Otherwise, there really is no need at all to be on site. Dorms? Please. The American college as currently conceived is very much out of date.