In 1803, 20 orphans boarded a ship in Spain. Though all of them looked healthy, one of them developed pustules eight days later. The pustules soon developed into scabs.

The child’s symptom, iconic of the dreaded disease smallpox, was not a catastrophe; in fact, it was exactly what King Carlos of Spain hoped. The child’s scab was scraped, and the scrapings were rubbed into scratches of the arm of another orphan. This orphan then developed scabs and the process was repeated until all of the orphans bore the distinctively scabbed arm. The ship went to ports around Asia and the Americas and delivered scabs to each port.

What seems like a disturbing scene from a David Lynch movie is actually the 19th century version of vaccination and is one of the many fascinating stories in Carl Zimmer’s new book Planet of Viruses. Zimmer is a long-time writer of popular science essays and books including Parasite Rex and Microcosm. In Planet of Viruses, Zimmer introduces a new virus in each chapter; the history of its discovery, how it’s treated and how researching that particular virus is important both to human health and understanding vast biological concepts.

For example, the chapter on human papillomaviruses (HPV) has the intriguing title “Rabbits with Horns.” Zimmer starts the chapter talking about jackalopes, the rabbits with antlers familiar to anyone who has visited rural Midwest or Western states.

“Most jackalopes are nothing but taxidermic trickery,” Zimmer explains in the chapter. “But like many myths, the tale of the jackalope has a grain of truth buried at its core.”

Zimmer then tells the story of a scientist who successfully caught a “horned” rabbit and wondered if these horns were actually tumors. The scientist ground up the horns and mixed them in a solution, which he then filtered to only let tiny viruses through. He then rubbed the solution on the heads of healthy rabbits. They grew horns as well, turning normal rabbits into jackalopes.

Zimmer masterfully hooks in readers who don’t necessarily find microbes interesting on their own. The book is 94 pages, a very fast read for the busy college student. In those 94 pages, he gives whirlwind introductions to viruses commonly known (such as the common cold, influenza and HIV) and to viruses unheard of to the general public (such as bacteriophages, marine phages and mimiviruses).

Though the latter categories seem like they should only be interesting to scientists in lab coats, there’s a reason Zimmer includes them in this book. The chapters are short, but he explores many broad scientific ideas that border on the philosophical.

Viruses are more than tiny microbes that make us sick; they can transfer genes between species, meaning about 8 percent of human genes are actually virus genes. Viruses can infect people and then become stripped of everything that makes people sick. Then the immunity to the virus and the virus genes are passed on to the next generation. The virus genes aren’t just useless hitchhikers; some of them have become useful for tasks like attaching placental cells to a developing fetus and thus have become essential to our own survival.

Zimmer beautifully describes this arrangement in his chapter “Our Inner Parasites” on endogenous (meaning “generated within”) retroviruses.

“In our most intimate moment, as new human life emerges from old, viruses are essential to our survival,” he writes in the chapter. “There is no us and them – just a gradually blending and shifting mix of DNA.”

Therein lies one of the most important, and awe-inspiring, concepts of biology. Separating life into distinct categories of species is useful for certain practical reasons but generates the misconception that we don’t interact very much.

In fact, nothing could survive if not for physical and genetic interaction. Even separating living from not-living can be a distraction from the continuum of diversity around us.

In his final chapter “Epilogue: The Alien in the Water Cooler,” Zimmer concludes that life “did not start suddenly with the flick of a great cosmic power switch. It’s likely that life emerged gradually, as raw ingredients like sugar and phosphate combined in increasingly complex reactions on the early Earth.”

Planet of Viruses is an interesting read for biology students and a fascinating introduction for non-scientists. It is an excellent primer in how life is all connected as told through the stories of its tiniest residents.

AMY STEWART can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

   There are all kinds of threats on the internet, but recent high-profile security breaches, such as the one that has crippled Sony’s Playstation Network for the past few weeks, can have devastating effects.

In the case of the Playstation Network security breach, customers lost personal information and credit card information. Sony also lost consumer information. Since the hack, consumers have had serious doubts over whether the information they provide is safe.

So, is the UC Davis network safe?

  “UC Davis has one of the leading information security programs within the University of California system,” said Robert Ono, Information Technologies (IT) security coordinator at UC Davis.

He said that the UC Davis network features layered security, an approach that serves to give the system reliability.

“We have 16 cyber-security standards which computers must comply with before connecting to our network on-campus,” Ono said.

Along with these standards, Ono said that the network is constantly being checked for improvements and weaknesses.

“We always monitor network traffic into and exiting the campus to identify malicious activity and vulnerabilities in computing systems on the campus network,” Ono said.

He said that the security exposure of the network is reduced through the outsourcing of credit card information processing.

“This means that we do not need to store credit card numbers and related transaction information on campus. Even with this outsourcing, our contractual agreements with our online credit card processors include specifications defining operational security standards,” Ono said.

He said that UC Davis strongly supports information security training. Over the summer, the university will host a system-wide security conference where over 300 technologists will attend. The conference will provide the technologists with computer and network security instruction.

Even with this security structure, the IT department still has standards in place in the event of a breach.

“The response plan is based on evaluating the scope and nature of a reported security incident,” Ono said. “We evaluate the severity and urgency of the incident to prioritize our response and define our reporting requirements.”

He said that if the network was persistently attacked by continuous and multiple intrusion methods by a hacker or hackers, that a breach could happen.

“However, that is likely true of any other higher education institution or corporation,” Ono said. “We do everything possible, within a cost-effective framework, to minimize the chances of a breach.”

Ono said that there are almost 30,000 systems connected to the UC Davis network on any given day, so it is important there is compliance to the security standards in place to minimize the chances of security risks.

“A vulnerable system is more likely to be successfully attacked and a compromised system could be used to spread malware and/or attack other vulnerable computer systems and data,” Ono said.

Nevertheless, Ono believes that the IT department is doing everything possible to protect the UC Davis network.

“I think we’re doing a very good job at protecting university information with the systems we have in place here and with the skilled group of security technologists we have,” he said.

Matt Bishop, professor in the department of computer science at UC Davis, believes the network is safe.

“They take a lot more precautions here than in commercial places when it comes to protecting information,” Bishop said.

Bishop said that the network is always monitoring itself and any threats to make sure everything that can be done, is being done.

“Let’s put it this way, I’d worry about other things than a Playstation-style breach here,” he said.

The Cyber Security Public Awareness Act of 2011 is attempting to raise the awareness of the concerns these security breaches pose. The bill attempts to raise public awareness of attacks on the government, attacks on infrastructure and attacks on businesses and consumers.

“Information breaches, such as the recent Sony breach, are raising everyone’s attention as to how computer vulnerabilities can create great privacy threats to individuals; as a result, we could see some legislation being instituted in the next 12 to 18 months,” Ono said.

ERIC C. LIPSKY can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

Seven months after a voicebox transplant at the UC Davis Medical Center (UCDMC) allowed a patient to speak on her own for the first time in over a decade, the patient is recovering and voicebox transplant requests are increasing.

In an 18-hour surgery that took place in October 2010, an international team of doctors transplanted a larynx, or voicebox, accompanied by the donor’s thyroid gland and trachea – the windpipe. The patient, a 52-year-old Modesto woman, hadn’t spoken for 11 years.

Doctors noted that what made Brenda Jensen an ideal candidate was the fact that she was already on medications to prevent organ rejection for a kidney-pancreas transplant she received four years before. The thyroid gland was transplanted because the gland is interwoven with the new voicebox, and provides the critical blood supply to both the voicebox and the windpipe.

“We knew she could manage and tolerate the anti-rejection medications and that she didn’t have to just start [on them],” said Ann Sievers, an ear, nose and throat nurse clinician for UCDMC. Sievers was on the team of professionals in charge of Jensen’s care.

Due to a previous surgery in 1999, a breathing tube had irreversibly damaged Brenda Jensen’s voicebox. For 11 years, Jensen could only speak with the assistance of a hand-held electronic device and breathe through a tube in her trachea. Thanks to her recent transplants, Jensen may be able to eventually remove the tube that has been providing an airway passage for her body.

“Her airway is getting better with time – but [the tracheostomy removal] is going to take a few more months,” Sievers said.

Though Jensen has a new voicebox, she still retains her original voice. Speech production is created cognitively and via the movements of the tongue and mouth.

“It doesn’t change because the larynx only creates the energy and vibration to articulate words,” Sievers said.

Jensen has actually informed Sievers that her friends from high school were able to recognize who she was just based solely on her voice and intonation.

Since Jensen’s surgery, many people have contacted Golden State Donor Services (GSDS), the organization that arranged the organ donation, to inquire about voicebox transplants.

However, Tracy Bryan, director of public relations for GSDS, does not think that there will be a large increase in this type of transplants due to the surgery’s intricacy.

“The real estate between your head and body is one of the most complicated areas to remove and replace successfully,” Bryan said.

For this procedure, doctors had to reconnect five nerves, three arteries and two veins.

Bryan also credits the unique transplant history of Jensen that permitted this successful elective surgery.

Normally, larynxes are not even requested or recovered from donors, but this was a particular case, and GSDS approached the donor family for consent.

The usual organs donated are the heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, kidneys and intestines.

“Each donor can potentially save up to eight lives through organ donation and improve another 50 lives through tissue donation,” Bryan said.

For more information on donor services, go to donatelifecalifornia.org.

EVA TAN can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

“Okay, class, make your bibliography in [insert confusing format].”

But, how do we find MLA, or APA, ASA, Chicago or Turabian style? Some formats put last name first and then first initial and others put the author’s full name. Some of them put the page numbers in bold, and some put the article title in bold, while others use no bold at all. It can all get very confusing.

What is it?

BibMe is a deus-ex-machina for students writing papers that require bibliographies or works-cited sections. Users simply enter the ISBN of any book, and BibMe automatically creates a citation in any format.

BibMe also allows users to cite magazines, newspapers, websites, journals, movies, interviews, lectures, encyclopedias and even photographs.

How does it work?

BibMe gives two options for generating citations. Users can either enter the title of whatever source they are citing and let BibMe automatically generate the citation. Or users can manually enter the required information such as author, pages, publisher etc., and BibMe will put it into the correct format.

A cherry on top

Not only will BibMe do all of this for you, it will also export your citations to a Word document so you can easily add them to your paper without awkward web-to-document copy pasting.

All of this, for free. Check it out at bibme.org.

– Hudson Lofchie