According to the Times of India, scientists in London have developed a new flu vaccination which they claim to be “universal”. The new vaccine, Flu-v, supposedly offers lifelong protection against any and all strains of influenza. Professor John Oxford, scientific director of Retroscreen Virology, said “A universal vaccine could…reduce the need for people to have vaccines each year against seasonal flu”.

The new vaccination is said to recognize a constantly recurring element within the many strains of the virus, and is intended to defend the immune system against that element.

Plans are being made to conduct a larger clinical trial, and hopefully have the vaccine available for the public in three to five years.

It’s going around.

Your neighbors. Your co-workers. You.

We’re sick lately. It’s not all in our head. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health reports that rates of flu and flu-like illnesses have been rising over the past week and are expected to keep jumping.

“Rates of flu-like illness continues to rise in Massachusetts this past week, and are expected to continue to climb in the weeks ahead,” the DPH said in a statement Friday. “We can’t know for sure when rates will peak, but one thing we are certain about is that there’s still plenty of flu vaccine available, and it’s absolutely not too late to take advantage.”

Doctor’s office visits for flu or flue symptoms have also climbed 81 percent since last week.

There are the obvious things that will give you swine flu”"like getting sneezed on, for instance”"and then there are the painfully obvious things that will give you swine flu”"like playing beer pong.

We could probably file this under “Obvious Science” but officals at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate Troy, NY have warned students that the sharing of cups during games of beer pong lead to the spread of disease, and especially of the spread of H1N1 this flu season. The same officials sent out a campus-wide email detailed a group of students who had all come down the virus after a weekend game.

Area schools are reporting many cases of the swine flu; RPI, a school of about 7,000 total students has reported 21 cases this semester so far.

(photo via)

Chalk one up for the scientists: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has announced that preliminary tests have shows that the H1N1 flu vaccine produces a “robust immune response” with only a single dose, and will likely be available earlier than expected.

This signifies a shift from last month when government officials were warning Americans that the swine flu vaccine could be delayed or require multiple dosing. Because the vaccine will likely only require a single dose, it is expeted that even more people will be able to receive the vaccine.

High-risk patients will be allowed to receive the H1N1 vaccine at the beginning of October, while it will be available to the general public by mid-October.

The vaccine for the general flu season is widely available now, and health officials are urging people not to wait to get it. The flu season has started earlier than usual this year, and has proven to be rather virulent, aso early and wide vaccination is the government’s first line of defense against the coming flu season.

Time and time again, surveys are conducted, and time and time again, the same results come up: when you ask someone what the most germ filled place is they come into contact with is, they always say it’s the toilet seat or the bathroom. Turns out, that’s usually one of the cleanest. The actually worst place is the keyboard you’re touching right now. Luckily, you can clean your keyboard with Cyber Clean, an antibacterial play-doh-like gel-like membrane. Actually, it’s really hard to describe, but the pictures do it much more justice.

It makes sense how keyboards are so disgusting if you think about it. Our hands touch everything we come into contact with, and we handle our keyboards more on a daily basis than anything else. People often eat at their desks, and those crumbs are like little bacteria factories. All those crevices that are impossible to clean lead to uncontrolled bacterial growth, and often times, the spread of disease.

With back to school and the flu season approaching, not to mention the constant reminders how swine flu is going to kill us all, it’s important to arm yourself with the tools that can help you stay well. Cyber Clean is an anti-bacterial, gel-like membrane that molds and conforms itself to the shapes you press it into. In doing so it can clean and disinfect hard to reach places, like those spaces between your keys, behind air vents where dirt and dust particles can harbor germs, and all those ridges on your cell phones and electronics.

Cyber Clean is safe, non-toxic, biodegradable, and supposedly reusable up to 75 times, plus you can get the kids in on the fun too. Cyber Clean is available at most stores and drug stores, and retails for less than $10. We hope to get our hands on some soon and put it to the test in our lab and let you know how it holds up.

Emerson College alumnus David P. Twomey died June 30 after contracting the H1N1 Influenza virus. He was 27.

Mr. Twomey became ill June 24.

A Portland, Maine native, he was a 2001 graduate of Cheverus High School. Mr. Twomey received a B.A. in communication arts from Gannon University in Erie, Pa., in 2005. He graduated from Emerson in 2006 with a master’s degree in political and organizational communications.

According to the college, Mr. Twomey had lived in Washington, D.C. since 2007 and was working as an operations coordinator for digital media services for the U.S. Federal Courts Office of Public Affairs since June 2008.

“There are those times in teaching when you are blessed with an exceptionally talented and humane and incredibly gifted student — that was my experience with David Twomey,” said J. Gregory Payne, Twomey’s former professor, in a statement released by Emerson. Mr. Twomey was Payne’s graduate assistant. “He lit up the room with his smile and compassion and love of politics and the promise of public diplomacy. He truly was one of the most gifted students I have ever encountered and left a lasting legacy in whatever he did and to those he touched in his all too-short-time with us.”

A funeral mass was said on Tuesday at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland, Maine.

TORONTO — A Central Alberta pig farm is under quarantine after its hogs caught the same H1N1 virus that has sickened more than 1,000 humans worldwide. The news has heightened fears among pig farmers, whose animals already face much prejudice because of the virus’s common name, swine flu.

As Alberta’s Agriculture Minister George Groeneveld and countless others have stressed, there is currently no evidence that the virus can be transferred by eating pork products. However, after this occurrence, which is believed to be the first instance that the disease was transferred from human to animal, pork consumers around the world are being extra cautious even after Groenveld publicly exclaimed that “there is no risk to [Alberta's] food supply.”

Chinese officials have banned pork imports from the province even though officials say that the virus was contained to the one farm and that all 2, 200 pigs were quarantined and contained. In total, 200 hogs were infected and are currently recovering. They pose no risk of transmitting the disease to any other Alberta hogs.

The virus was transmitted by a farmer to one of his pigs after he and his family returned from Mexico nearly a month ago with flu-like symptoms. Upon their return, the swine flu outbreak was not major news and therefore, the family never thought to get checked.

Though H1N1 ‚ cannot be transmitted through eating pork, 20 countries, including Russia, China and Thailand have banned the imports of pork products from infected nations including Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, three of the world’s top pork exporters.

The World Health Organization (WHO) remarked that it would need to see H1N1 spread throughout Asia and Europe before declaring a pandemic. This is thought to occur soon.

In Egypt, fears have also risen regarding the safety of pigs. On Saturday the government ordered the genocide of all pigs in Egypt (nearly 300,000), to which farmers and hog owners were outraged. Pig owners threw stones at government officials who in turn fired guns and tossed tear gas. The ‚ officials seized pigs from various owners and gave no compensation in return.

Remarkably, 12 were injured in riots caused by the pig slaughter. Oh and by the way, there have been no reports of any H1N1 virus ‚ cases in Egypt yet.