Daily Archives: January 29, 2012

Just as overnight temperatures are forecast to drop into the 30s,
the Salvation Army men's shelter in Orlando has
been forced to shutter its doors temporarily, the charity
announced Thursday.

The culprit? An infestation of bed bugs.

The closure, expected to last up to a week, left the agency
scrambling to find accommodations for about 75 homeless men.
Another 50 men, enrolled in the Salvation Army's long-term
transitional program, will be housed in a gymnasium on the
property until the shelter reopens.

The charity hopes that local residents will pitch in to help
cover the estimated $15,000 cost of tenting the building for
treatment.

"It's a lot of money," said public relations coordinator Vicki
Hastings. "We do have some funds available for an emergency, but
then that's money we can't spend on other needs."

The incident also comes as shelters in general are struggling
to keep pace with Central Florida's ballooning number of
homeless men, women and children.

"We know the strain our closure, even for these few days, puts
on the homeless population and its already overstretched
providers," said Major Andrew Kelly, the Salvation Army's
Orlando Area Commander. "So we are working quickly to be able
to … operate at full capacity."

The Coalition for the Homeless, just over a mile away, is
expected to take many of the men, though its emergency shelter
has no mattresses to sleep on, only floor space.

"We can accommodate all of them at this point," said
spokeswoman Muffet Robinson.

But those shelters with actual beds report none to spare.

"The majority of the emergency beds are full every night
anyway," said Cathy Jackson, executive director of the Homeless
Services Network of Central Florida. "And there's already no
room at the inn for the 150 to 200 folks who are sleeping
outside or in abandoned buildings or carefully concealed
tents."

At the Orlando Union Rescue Mission, which has 60
emergency-shelter beds, president and CEO Allen Harden said
there's typically competition for a spot.

"We've got guys that stand in line for hours trying to get a
bed," he said. "We keep talking to the powers that be, trying
to expand. We're sitting right there in the shadow of the new
gazillion-dollar arena and we're saying, 'Come on, throw us
some crumbs.' "

Bed bugs have become a scourge of the developed world over the
past 15 years, affecting everything from five-star hotels to
mom-and-pop motels to individual homes. They can be carried by
humans and pets, and hitchhike on clothing and luggage. Though
their bite itself is painless, it can lead to severe itching
and subsequent skin infections.

While other shelters in Orlando report periodic problems with
the pests, operators said this was the first time an entire
building would be closed. The Salvation Army's shelter for
women and shelter, housed in a different building, remains
open.

ksantich@tribune.com or
407-420-5503

Read this article:
Bed bug infestation closes Salvation Army shelter

Discovered: La Niña weather patterns could cause pandemics,
when men outnumber women they tend to spend more, and the
Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle gets an update. 

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Better Politicians

La Niña brings pandemics New research
suggests that La Niña, weather-pattern cousin of El Niño,
makes global pandemics more likely. La Niña periodically
brings cool water to the surface of the Pacific Ocean making
for warmer, dryer winters. More importantly, the U.S.
researchers posit, it alters the migratory patterns of
flu-carrying birds, which might explain why the four most
recent outbreaks -- in 1918, 1957 and 1958, and most recently
in 2009 with the swine flu -- were preceeded by periods
of La Niña. This is less than awesome news as we're in the
middle of a La Niña episode right now. Researchers note,
though, that there are many incidents when La Niña doesn't
precede a flu outbreak, so more research should
be done to explain why certain periods result in the spread of
disease. Luckily, the fear inspired by swine flu, bird flu, and
Gwyneth Paltrow mean we've stepped up
efforts to monitor pigs, people and flu genes, so research
into its spread should only move more quickly. [BBC, Houston Chronicle]

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Brain

When women are scarce, men will spend more.
New research posits that when men think they outnumber women,
they'll often increase the amount they spend. Researchers at
the University of Minnesota fed men articles saying they
outnumbered the women in the area, then asked them questions
about how much of their next paycheck they wanted to save and
how much they wanted to borrow. The lady drought made them 42
percent less willing to save and 84 percent more willing to
borrow money. The researchers draw some reasonable theories for
why: "How do humans compete for access to mates? What you find
across cultures is that men often do it through money, through
status and through products," lead author Vladas
Griskevicius said. The Wall Street Journal finds this
pretty natural when examined through an economic lens. "When
something is in short supply, common sense suggests that it
should become more valuable." So there you have it ladies. Move
to China! [USA Today, Wall Street Journal]

RELATED: 'Skim' Is a Generous Word for How People Read
Nutrition Labels

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle gets
more complicated. Just when we were wrapping our heads
around the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (just kidding),
research published in the journal Nature
Physics suggests our understanding of it is
incomplete. As you might recall, the principle is a
foundational one for quantum physics and it says that it's hard
to measure multiple properties of a particle at the same time
because the act of measuring them alters the properties. But
Vienna University of Technology researchers found
experimentally what Japanese researchers had already posited
theoretically that different sources of uncertainty can, in
fact, be distinguished. Heisenberg's principle isn't disproven,
it's just often oversimplified (uncertain, dare we say?), they
say. It's all a bit confusing, but a good reminder that even
foundational theories can be updated. [Science Daily] 

RELATED: Lab Rats Finally Get Their Due; How Cavemen
Fought Bed Bugs

Babies can learn language by lip reading.
Previous research held that babies learned language primarily
through hearing it, but a new study says babies learn langauge
partly by watching the mouth move, and the new finding could
help us diagnose autism earlier. Researchers at Florida
Atlantic University tracked the eyeballs of infants less than
12 months old and found that their eyes moved to the speaker's
mouth more often than older babies or adults. Other research
has shown that older autistic children keep paying close
attention to a speaker's mouth even after most infants stop the
habit after about one year, potentially allowing earlier
diagnoses of the condition. [ABC News]

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La Niña and Flu Outbreaks; Men Overspend When Women Are Scarce