Swine flu; made in USA, LHC restart

Swine flu: made in the USA

Q: What do you know about this swine flu virus?

R.D.: We know it’s quite similar to viruses that were circulating in the United States and are still circulating in the United States and that are self-limiting, and they usually only are found in Midwestern states where there is swine farming. There’s only one well-documented case where the infection spread from one human to another. What we know is that it is not common that there is sustained transmission in people.

....
Q: Have you completely sequenced this virus?

R.D.: Yes, 2 weeks ago. Very soon after we received specimens from California and Texas. Hemagglutinin, neuraminidase, and matrix, the three genes that have the most public health interest, were sequenced, and then the whole genome was completed.

Q: How large is the genome?

R.D.: It’s 14 kilobases.

Q: It’s only a little larger than HIV. You could sequence it in hours.

R.D.: Yes. It’s tiny.

sciencemag
How hard is it to set up a sequencing lab for 14kBases?

Actually you just need primers, then you use a PCR machine which is the size of a breadmaker. The whole setup is cheap

In general, you need to generate primers to segments of the virus that are unique. It is easy enough to identify these segments using proprietary software to compare sequences. Then you synthesize nucleotide sequences that correspond to these segments. These are called primers, which you use to amplify genetic material from the pathogen if it is present in the test sample.
On Saturday, Marcus Panning at the University of Freiburg identified which primers were needed (while I went to a wedding!). Olfert Landt of the Berlin company TIB Molbiol made the primers physically on Sunday. This part was critical — it is not so easy to get primers physically made to short order, especially over a weekend. I was lucky to have such a good contact in Olfert, again thanks to our work together in the SARS days.
By Monday morning we had everything in place

Christian Drosten
nature

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LHC Restart
100 inverse picobarns of collisions by spring 2010,
discovermagazine
I'm relaxed about the whole Black Hole thing. I believe Hawking and Penrose, those tiny fellas wont eat Switzerland.
Also Theres a few E20 eV protons coming in from outer space every year. (E20 = 10²⁰)
Thats like an 85kph tennis ball

In the Rest Frame of an E19 eV protons, the 3K cosmic background is seen as E8eV and they interact, so we see less,
Somehow at E20 eV the protons dont get bothered, and they come in with "Centre of Mass Frame" energy of hundreds of times more than LHC
I dont know how E20 is only 'hundreds' of times 10TeV , but thats relativity for you
.
Nature 458, 847-851 (16 April 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature07948
The dawn of the particle astronomy era in ultra-high-energy cosmic rays
auger

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I find out that this gadget, in Argentina, 1600 Cherenkov detectors 3000 km², is the only big array still running
The E20 protons smash high in the sky,make a conical cascade, 16km² at the ground


Nobody knows how they get so fast.
A graph suggests
a hundred kilometers of neutron star mass might do the acceleration..

I have to physically bike to the National Library to read Nature - its not free electronically... ugh