Month: October 2016

The global spread of AIDS was one of the greatest public health crises of the last century. While we’ve made tremendous advances in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention and treatment, the details of the virus’s global spread have been harder to pin down. A new report published this week in Nature sheds light on when and where HIV arrived in the United States: in New York City around 1970. It also removes blame from the man long known as “Patient Zero”—he was not, in fact, the first person in North America to contract the virus.

Because HIV attacks the immune system, limiting the body’s ability to fight infections or infection-related cancers, the first patients presented with a range of symptoms, from enlarged lymph nodes and pneumonia to cancer. Physicians in California first recognized it as a single entity in 1981, but the disease didn’t get a name—acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)—until a year later. By then, media reports of a “gay cancer” had begun to raise alarms and stigma across the country. The first drugs to treat HIV were not approved until 1987, by which time the disease had taken more than 40,000 lives.

Part of the problem lay in the limitations of medical and scientific technology. We didn’t have the capability to look inside the disease with the level of detail required to stop it. Blood tests could pick up on the presence of HIV in a sample, but they couldn’t spell out its genetic code. To do that, said study co-author and virus evolution expert Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, researchers would need a sample of RNA from the virus itself—a serious challenge, as the virus’s RNA is super delicate and breaks down at the slightest provocation.

But we’ve come a long way since then. Worobey and his colleagues in Arizona and at the University of Cambridge have created a vividly named new technique called RNA jackhammering that allows them to break down the human genes in a blood sample and extract and examine the virus RNA hiding within them.

To rewind the clock to HIV’s early days in the States, the researchers applied their jackhammers to blood samples taken from more than 2000 men in New York and San Francisco in 1978 and 1979. The nearly 40-year-old samples had degraded since their collection, but Worobey and his colleagues were still able to extract eight near-complete HIV RNA sequences, creating the oldest-known record of North American HIV genetics.

By comparing these sequences with those collected from other parts of the globe, the researchers were able to trace the virus’s evolution and devastating spread. They found that HIV had crossed from Africa to the Caribbean, and from there jumped to New York City and then San Francisco, where the first patients were identified. These findings run counter to earlier theories, which pinpointed the virus’s U.S. landfall to San Francisco.

The density of vulnerable populations in New York City were like “dry tinder” for HIV, Worobey said in a press statement, “causing the epidemic to burn hotter and faster and infecting enough people that it grabs the world’s attention for the first time.”

By the time the blood samples were collected, the authors say, the virus had already evolved into the form it bears today.

Their analysis also upends another well-known element of the AIDS story: the identity of “Patient Zero.” For nearly three decades, scientists have traced the virus’s entry to the U.S. back to one man: Gaëtan Dugas. But Worobey and his colleagues tested a sample of Dugas’s blood from 1983 and found that the virus RNA in his blood was no less evolved—and therefore no older—than the viral genes in his peers. He wasn’t Patient Zero.

That the weight of the AIDS pandemic ever came to be placed on Dugas’s shoulders at all may itself have been a simple typographical error, the authors write. The man’s original file identified him as a patient from Outside of California, or Patient O. Somewhere along the way, the letter O became a zero, a mistake that would be perpetuated for decades—long after Dugas himself had died.

The authors are hopeful that their findings and their new technique will help accelerate scientific unraveling of the virus.

“Earlier detection and better alignment of the various options we have to make it harder for the virus to move from one person to the next,” Worobey said, “are key to driving HIV out of business.”
 

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When searching for a new job, there are many factors to consider: How are the benefits? Is the office culture a good fit? And most importantly, does it pay well? As for that last question, straight salaries aren’t the only numbers you should be looking at. It’s also important to weigh a job’s potential for wage growth over time.

To that end, Glassdoor recently calculated the 13 jobs that saw the biggest increases in median base pay between June 2015 and June 2016. Positions in marketing, healthcare, and sales all saw above-average salary raises over the past year. The job that received the biggest boost was certified nursing assistant. The median starting pay rose to $50,000 in 2016 from $45,000 in 2015—a jump of 11 percent compared to last year’s national average of 2.5 percent.

Sales managers saw similar growth with an 11 percent uptick from $66,040 in 2015 to $73,000 in 2016. Behind them, implementation consultant salaries rose from $70,000 to $75,000 and recruiters’ salaries rose from $42,000 to $45,000. Other jobs that broke the top 10 included registered nurse, media planner, data analyst, and admissions representative.

Of course, overall averages like these don’t apply to every part of the country. If room for growth is a top priority on your on job hunt, it’s also worth looking at the individual economies of your city and state.

[h/t Glassdoor]

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Next time you visit Arlington National Cemetery, you’ll have to leave Fido or your bike at home. According to Stars and Stripes, the official newspaper of the United States Armed Forces, the Army recently announced two new policies: As of Wednesday, October 26, no pets or unauthorized bikes will be allowed on burial grounds, among other regulations.

The cemetery is one of America’s most sacred spaces, but dog walkers and cyclists often use its 624 acres for recreational purposes. These visitors don’t intend to be disrespectful, but their presence still affects the decorum of both funerals and ceremonies at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Army explained in a series of official statements.

“We have 27 to 30 services a day,” Stephen Smith, public affairs officers for Arlington National Cemetery, told military newspaper Pentagram. “In almost any quadrant you go to during our work hours, there’s going to be a service going on.”

There are a few exceptions, WTOP News reports. Service animals and working military dogs are still permitted to enter the cemetery, and if you’re visiting a relative’s headstone or niche, you can request a temporary pass from the gravesite’s executive director to ride a bike directly to and from the site. (Arlington National Cemetery doesn’t have designated bike paths, so officials are concerned that cyclists will collide with pedestrians or cars.)

For cyclists using the cemetery as a shortcut to get from Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall to Memorial Avenue (the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery that stretches across the Potomac River to the nearby Lincoln Memorial), officials recommend taking an alternate route around the cemetery that’s only slightly longer than the direct path.

But sorry, animal lovers: The cemetery likely won’t make any special allowances for unauthorized furry friends. (Previously, site policy allowed trained pets on leashes in every part of the graveyard, apart from President John F. Kennedy’s grave.)

[h/t Stars and Stripes]

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The best time to write is often when there is nothing else to do. This trick certainly worked in 1816, when a single writing contest—born out of boredom caused by intense and unseasonable rain—led to the creation of several classics that helped shape the Gothic literature genre: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, John William Polidori’s The Vampyre, and Lord Byron’s poem “The Darkness.” The writers drew inspiration from variety of places, but one of the most important catalysts was a French anthology of German ghost stories called Fantasmagoriana. An abridged version of the tome of spooky tales, titled Tales of the Dead, has since been translated to English—and it can be read online.

Fantasmagoriana was curated and translated by Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès in 1812. Eyriès hand-selected eight frightening tales from German literature to present to a French audience. Lord Byron had the book on hand while staying at a villa near Lake Geneva with Polidori, his personal doctor. Mary Godwin (soon to be Mary Shelley), Percy Shelley, and Godwin’s stepsister Claire Clairmont came to visit, but they all found themselves trapped inside due to the nasty weather. Lord Byron entertained his visitors by reading aloud from Fantasmagoriana, along with other scary stories like Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Christabel.”

While Lord Byron captivated his audience with stories of ghosts and spirits, a dark storm outside created the perfect atmosphere. The spooky mood inspired the group to create their own versions of scary stories in a friendly competition. According to The Lady and Her Monsters, Lord Byron declared “We will each write our own ghost story.”

The writers worked at their own pace, each struggling to get started on their story and being secretive with their ideas. Mary Shelley later said those summer nights were what started her famous novel, and named two stories from Fantasmagoriana that directly inspired Frankenstein: “The Family Portraits” and “History of the Inconstant Lover.”

As Mary Shelley wrote in her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein:

When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw — with shut eyes, but acute mental vision, — I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.

Polodori settled on expanding one of Lord Byron’s discarded ideas. His story became The Vampyre, which is considered the first portrayal of the vampire as we know it today. The doctor would also claim that the writing sessions led to another story, Ernestus Berchtold, which was inspired by the rumors of Byron’s affair with his half sister. Lord Byron, meanwhile, wrote “The Darkness,” an apocalyptic tale of a world without any light.

Thanks to Archive.org you can read the English version of the anthology that inspired these classics for yourself. Maybe after reading, you’ll be inspired to write your own scary stories to tell this Halloween.

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They’ve left our earthly world, but spirits sure have a lot to share with us. At least, that seems to have been the case in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period that witnessed a boom in books said to have been drafted by the departed. That era was the golden age of Spiritualism, and many people claimed they communicated with spirits who guided their minds and hands into recording stories, poems, and even voluminous novels. Here are six books supposedly dictated by ghosts that remain widely accessible today.

1. HISTORICAL REVELATIONS …(1886), EMPEROR JULIAN & THOMAS CUSHMAN BUDDINGTON

The Roman Emperor Julian was apparently so taken aback by how civilization developed in the 1500 years following his death in 363 CE that he felt compelled to express himself from beyond the grave via the printed word. Historical Revelations of the Relation Existing Between Christianity and Paganism Since the Disintegration of the Roman Empire, recorded by American writer Thomas Cushman Buddington, attacked Christianity as the root cause of what Julian supposedly saw as a world in utter disarray and desolation. Julian’s spirit condemned Constantine and his successors for embracing “a false religion” that bred violence and stagnated Europe’s development.

More realistically, this call to return to traditional Roman values was Cushman’s rather creative way to share his own grievances. Perhaps Cushman felt uncomfortable openly lambasting Christianity as an obstacle to moral and intellectual growth and found the emperor, who studied Platonic philosophy, a suitable figure to vocalize his concerns about the human race. In his preface to Julian’s writings, he praises the spirit, saying he “is of the most of the most pure and elevated character.”

2. MY TUSSLE WITH THE DEVIL, AND OTHER STORIES (1918), O. HENRY & ALBERT HOUGHTON PRATT

Born William Sydney Porter, the celebrated writer known as O. Henry died in 1910 with hundreds of short stories to his name. Yet even death could not halt his creative output, as eight years later, a collection of stories surfaced, all purportedly newly written by him. They arrived through the medium Albert Houghton Pratt, who claimed that he communicated with O. Henry through a ouija board. The very first conversation had supposedly occurred on September 18, 1917, and many more followed, with Pratt inviting friends to gather around the board to listen to O. Henry’s spirit rattle off tales. Pratt, in his opening comments to the book, describes O. Henry as a chatty spirit; apparently “overburdened with plots,” the ghost at times even exhausted his human companions as sessions stretched into late hours of the night. He would also self-edit his narrations: Once, he told Pratt to erase the last half of a story that had come to him too quickly and that fell short of his standards.

Pratt apparently had full control over his own thoughts throughout these sittings and found opportunities to pose his own questions. Once, he asked O. Henry what he thought about movie adaptations of his books. The spirit’s response: “Foolish rehash of yesterday’s ignorance.”

It appears Pratt anticipated the negative reception of O. Henry’s alleged latest writings, too. In an introduction signed by “Parma”—Pratt’s pseudonym—he brushed off nonbelievers and any skeptics who might have found the prose style different from O. Henry’s. The spirit world, Pratt explained, simply inspires a different voice; furthermore, the stories prove that a leopard can change its spots.

3. HOPE TRUEBLOOD (1918), PATIENCE WORTH & PEARL CURRAN

Also dictated through a ouija board was Hope Trueblood, just one of many works of fiction purportedly penned by the spirit Patience Worth in 1918. Arguably one of the most famous of spirit authors, Worth communicated through Pearl Curran, a housewife who lived in St. Louis. From 1913 through 1937, Curran dutifully recorded books, plays, poems, and short stories, at times receiving and scribbling thousands of words in one session.

Hope Trueblood, which told the story of a girl in Mid-Victorian England searching for her father, stands out from the rest of Worth’s oeuvre. The spirit was known for her archaic language and typically set stories far in the past: Telka occurred in medieval England; The Sorry Tale was set in the days of Jesus. Hope Trueblood unfolded in the present era (when originally published) and Worth employed plain English for the first time. Like many of her works, the novel received critical acclaim.

Hope Trueblood, however, also drew more skeptics than Worth’s previous works. What would the spirit of a 17th-century English girl (whom Indians murdered when she immigrated to America) know of Victorian life? Yet people had difficulty explaining how Curran, who had little education and opportunity for travel, wove these stories that contained detailed, accurate descriptions of distant settings. The mystery captivated Worth and Curran’s readers, and it went with Curran to her grave. When she passed away in 1937, the headline of her obituary in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat read “Patience Worth is Dead.”

4. TO WOMAN (1920), MESLOM & MARY MCEVILLY

An American medium in Paris known as Mary McEvilly received messages from a mysterious spirit named Meslom during a number of sessions held between October 1919 and March 1920. They form To Woman, a book describing the duties of the female sex to help better the world and lead mankind to salvation. Lofty, abstract statements fill the 108 pages, and Meslom’s often-repetitive ramblings are arduous to read. Overall, the spirit argues that women are responsible for human’s spiritual progression since they are in more in touch with nature and have greater intuition than men, who have more highly developed powers of reason.

McEvilly identifies Meslom as a man, and although he praises women for their sensitivities, he also betrays sexist attitudes. Man will always be master, and women should surrender any hope of gender equality, he tells McEvilly; although they have good judgment, women will never make laws; women who steadily pursue an education may weaken their innate connection to all that is good. Most rewarding, he suggests, would be for a woman to instead pray frequently for knowledge that leads to spiritual development and happiness.

Curiously, To Woman emerged a few months before women in the U.S. received the full right to vote. Little record of Mary McEvilly exists, but her book must have come off as backward to more than a few people even when originally printed.

5. A WANDERER IN THE SPIRIT LANDS (1896), FRANCHEZZO & A. FARNESE

Victorians would find a chilling moral lesson in A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands, supposedly dictated to one A. Farnese by an Italian man who had recently passed away. Identified only as Franchezzo, his spirit fills over 300 pages with vivid descriptions of his lonely, miserable journey through the spirit world. Those dark travels were his deserved punishment, he writes, as he had lived a selfish life in worship of the material rather than of God.

Franchezzo initially ventures into the cold and decaying realms of hell, and only through laborious works of atonement eventually passes through bright heavenly gates. His tale serves as an engrossing sermon, warning its readers of the terrible fate that awaits if they do not start changing their sinful behavior while on earth—before it is too late.

6. OUINA’S CANOE AND CHRISTMAS OFFERING, FILLED WITH FLOWERS FOR THE DARLINGS OF THE EARTH (1882), OUINA & CORA L. V. RICHMOND

One of America’s most beloved spirits, Ouina was believed to be a young Native American girl who spread tens of thousands of uplifting messages from the spirit world. Beginning in 1851, she spoke through Cora Lodensia Veronica Scott, a famous Spiritualist from New York who had begun channeling spirits at a young age and launched a career as a trance lecturer (someone who performed public lectures supposedly received from the spirit world). Scott’s audience was often people who had lost loved ones; her romantic poems and tales painted the afterlife as a place filled with beauty and joy, offering mourners some comfort and rest from grief. Ouina’s Canoe was the first published collection of a handful of the spirit’s works, set to print at Christmas time as her gift to help and heal more people.

Along with verses filled with flowers, sunbeams, moonbeam fairies and morning stars, the book includes a biography of Ouina. Her own story is one of sorrow: Her mother had died in childbirth, and her father, chief of a tribe that resided along the Shenandoah River, decided to sacrifice her when she was about 15 to save his people from misfortune. With her touching history and messages of peace and love, it’s unsurprising that Scott’s guide received such great adoration, rather than cynical criticism.

(For five more books dictated from beyond the grave, click here.)