‘Zombies can wipe US out in 100 days’
A real-life zombie outbreak would leave the world’s population in a shambles, with less than 300 survivors remaining a mere 100 days into the apocalypse, according to a new study. Assuming that a zombie can find one person each day, with a 90 per cent chance of infecting victims with the zombie infection, the students from University of leicester in the UK suggest that by Day 100, there would be just 273 remaining human survivors, outnumbered a million to one by zombies. The team, which presented the findings in the Journal of Physics Special Topics, investigated the spread of a hypothetical zombie virus using the SIR model — an epidemiological model that describes the spread of a disease throughout a population. The model splits the population into three categories: Those susceptible to the infection, those infected and those that have either died or recovered. The SIR model considers the rates at which infections spread and die off as individuals come into contact with each other.
HIV treatment may boost syphilis risk
Men taking antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV infection may be at an increased risk for syphilis, a new study has warned. The availability of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) for the treatment of HIV infection has meant that the infection is no longer the automatic death sentence that it once was, researchers said. The absence of the fear factor is thought to have prompted higher rates of sexually transmitted infections as a result of risky, unprotected sex. Researchers said it is not clear why rates of syphilis among gay and bisexual men should be so much higher than those of chlamydia or gonorrhoea, especially as HAART boosts immune system activity and so would be expected to lower susceptibility to infections.
Blinking helps stabilise our vision
A study reveals that when we blink, our brain works extra hard to stabilise our vision, while adding that blinking lubricates dry eyes and protects them from irritants. The research, published in the journal Current Biology, found that when we blink, our brain repositions our eyeballs so we can stay focused on what we’re viewing. According to researchers, when our eyeballs roll back in their sockets during a blink, they don’t always return to the same spot when we reopen our eyes. “This misalignment prompts the brain to activate the eye muscles to realign our vision,” said lead study author Gerrit Maus from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “Our eye muscles are quite sluggish and imprecise, so the brain needs to constantly adapt its motor signals to make sure our eyes are pointing where they’re supposed to.”