There were 12 documented U.S.-based EEE epidemics between 1831 and 1959. The virus is spread between Culiseta melanura mosquitoes and various tree-perching birds found in forested wetlands. Occasionally, other mosquito species transmit the virus to people and other mammals. In people, EEEV takes roughly 3 to 10 days to cause symptoms. The virus initially causes fever, malaise, intense headache, muscle aches, nausea and vomiting; specific diagnostic testing may not reveal anything as EEEV is difficult to isolate from clinical samples, and testing for EEEV antibodies may be negative. Neurologic signs of EEE, which may appear within 5 days of infection, initially are nonspecific but rapidly progress. Most people (96%) infected with EEEV do not develop symptoms; however, of those who do, one-third or more die, and the others frequently suffer permanent and severe neurologic damage.

Although point-of-care diagnostics for EEE and many other mosquito-borne causes of encephalitis are not available, currently they would be of limited value in the absence of effective treatment, the authors write. So far, no antiviral drug has proven safe and effective against EEE, but many compounds are being assessed. Monoclonal antibodies have been found effective in an experimental animal model but only when given prior to infection. Patients with EEE are currently treated with supportive care, which often includes intensive care in a hospital and ventilator assistance. Patients with EEE are not infectious, and social support and counseling for both the patient and the family are vitally important given the seriousness of the disease, the authors write.

Several EEE vaccine candidates are in development but may have trouble reaching advanced development and licensure, according to the authors. EEE outbreaks are rare, brief and focal, and occur sporadically in unpredictable locations, making it difficult to identify an appropriate target population for vaccination. Efforts to develop mosquito-saliva vaccines that would be effective against multiple mosquito diseases, including EEE, are in early stages.

In the absence of effective EEE vaccines and treatments, state and local health departments can provide an early warning of imminent human infections by surveilling horses, birds and mosquitoes, but these efforts are threatened by insufficient funding, according to the authors. In recent years, the Americas have seen a growing number of emerging and re-emerging arboviruses, such as dengue, West Nile, chikungunya, Zika and Powassan. Although outbreaks of EEE disease thus far have been infrequent and focal, the spike in cases in 2019 and the looming presence of other, potentially deadly arboviruses in the United States and globally demand a national defense strategy for arboviruses and other vector-borne diseases, the authors write. Although the best way to address these viruses is not entirely clear, to “ignore them completely and do nothing would be irresponsible,” say the authors.

The team analyzed three meteorites with their original protocol and found sugars in two meteorites. “Analysis of sugars in meteorites is so difficult. Over the past several years, we have investigated the techniques of sugar analysis in such samples and constructed our original method” says lead author, Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University.

Amino acids and nucleobases, other vitally important compounds in the building block of life, have been found in meteorites previously. Scientists have known of the existence of sugars in meteorites. However, research to date has largely revealed sugar-related compounds (sugar acids and sugar alcohols) and the simplest sugar (dihydroxy acetone), compounds not considered essential for life.

Formation of bio-essential sugars, including ribose, on the prebiotic Earth, is considered to have been possible. However, there is no geological evidence of their formation. Furthermore, it is not clear which and how much sugar(s) formed on the prebiotic Earth.

With the current research evidencing the delivery of bio-essential sugars, it is plausible that extraterrestrial sugar contributed to the formation of primordial RNA on the prebiotic Earth. This, in turn, has the possibility of being a factor in the origin of life.

“The next step is to investigate the chirality of the sugars in more meteorites and to investigate how much sugars were provided from space and how the extraterrestrial sugar influenced life’s homochirality” says the team. NASA Jonson Space Center has provided the team other meteorites and the team will analyze them to see which meteorites contain the sugars and how theses sugars formed.

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But an international group of researchers has found that simply patrolling the grounds of two forest reserves in Ivory Coast has helped reduce illegal activity by well more than half between 2012 and 2016.

The researchers themselves were among those who conducted the foot patrols, said W. Scott McGraw, professor of anthropology at The Ohio State University and co-author of a recent paper in Tropical Conservation Science documenting their success.

McGraw said that on patrols he participated in, farmers tending illegal cocoa crops were often surprised that anyone approached them and told them to stop their activities.

“They just weren’t used to encountering anyone who put up any kind of resistance. We told them they weren’t allowed to be growing cocoa there and they would respond that ‘no one has ever told us we couldn’t,'” he said.

“It was just so blatant.”

McGraw conducted the study with Sery Gonedelé Bi, Eloi Anderson Bitty and Alphonse Yao of the University Félix Houphouët Boigny in Ivory Coast.

Forest loss is a major problem in Ivory Coast. Between 2000 and 2015, the country lost about 17 percent of its forest cover, driven by an annual deforestation rate — 2.69 percent — that was among the highest in the world, according to Global Forest Watch.

Much of that forest was cleared for cocoa farms to meet the growing demand for chocolate worldwide. The destruction of the forests — as well as the illegal poaching found in this study — threaten several critically endangered primates that live in these reserves, McGraw said. A previous study by McGraw and his colleagues documented the threat to primates.

The researchers conducted this study in the Dassioko Sud and Port Gauthier forest reserves along the Atlantic coast.

Regular patrols were carried out three to four times a month in both reserves between July 2012 and June 2016. Each team usually consisted of six to eight people, including the researchers, law enforcement officials (occasionally) and community members recruited from neighboring towns and paid with funds from several conservation organizations.

The patrol teams would normally go out for seven hours at a time, taking random routes so as to not be predictable. They noted the time and direction of all gun shots, collected discarded gun cartridges, and counted and dismantled all snares used to capture monkeys and other game.

They recorded the size and location of all logging and farming operations and destroyed all plantation crops, most of which were new cocoa seedlings.

When the patrols included law enforcement personnel, they would arrest poachers, as well as loggers and illegal farmers.

McGraw said he was never on one of the rare patrols that encountered a poacher with a gun, although his co-authors were.

“I was told those were the most tense situations. That is not a standoff that I would want to be a part of,” he said.

Altogether, during the four years of the study, the patrol teams apprehended six poachers, heard 302 gunshots, deactivated 1,048 snares and destroyed 515 hectares of cocoa farms.

But the good news is that the number of these illegal activities dropped dramatically over the years they patrolled. For example, the researchers documented about 140 signs of illegal activity (such as shotgun shells, snares or cocoa plantings) at Port Gauthier Forest Reserve in August 2012. In June 2016, there were fewer than 20. Similar reductions in illegal activities were recorded in Dassioko Sud Forest Reserve.

The patrol activities weren’t responsible for all the decline, McGraw said. For example, a portion of the poaching decline could have been related to the 2014 Ebola outbreak, which reduced demand for bushmeat.

But much of the decline in illegal activities in the reserves occurred before 2014, he noted.

Regular patrols in the two reserves have not continued since 2016, McGraw said. Surveys since then suggest that the gains made by the patrols are holding and illegal activities have not returned to their previous highs.

“That said, I think it is important that there is a renewed effort to patrol these reserves. We need something sustained,” he said.

“We need Ivorian officials to take a stronger stand against illegal activities in the country’s protected areas.”