Rinderpest has been known, and dreaded, for millennia. The deadly animal disease has killed livestock and wildlife, and threatening rural livelihoods and food security. A few weeks ago the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization annpounce that rinderpest has been eradicated world wide.

With the launching in 1994 of the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme (GREP), the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation began to consolidate gains in rinderpest control. FAO worked with World Organisation for Animal Health, which had been combating rinderpest since 1929. Rinderpest is only the second infectious disease in history to be wiped out, after smallpox, which was declared eradicated in 1980. Both diseases were among the first to be treated by vaccination in the 18th century. Eradication has been possible because neither disease mutates rapidly. The last known rinderpest case was in Kenya in 2001. Initially GREP worked to understand the geographical distribution and epidemiology of the disease. Later, it acted to contain rinderpest within the infected eco-systems, and to eliminate reservoirs of infection. Once experts believed that the virus had likely been eliminated, GREP concentrated on surveillance to prove the absence of the disease.

The next big target is polio — an incredibly wonderful prospect. A similar approach is being used—find out where the disease is, control it— particularly with vaccination—and then use surveillance to prove that it's gone, or detect any outbreaks. Vaccination of hundreds of millions of people, especially children, has been steadily shrinking the area where the virus is active. Only a few remaining cases of polio are being found in a handfull of countries.

In the Wall Street Journal (17 Nov 10), Jan Morris laments the decline of whistling.

One night during World War II, on leave in London, I penetrated the blackout to see a show at the London Hippodrome called The Lisbon Story. I forget what it was about, I forget who was in it, but I still have at the back of my mind its theme tune, which was called "Pedro the Fisherman."

This is because I have always been fond of whistling, and "Pedro the Fisherman" is the quintessential whistling song—jaunty, catchy, with a touch of the sentimental and an un-obliteratable melody. I like to think that it also expresses the generic character of people ...

"Although I know it can sometimes be intolerable to have a habitual siffleur in the family, forever performing 'Pedro the Fisherman,' I still mourn the decline of the whistlers," Morris writes.

It's not so much the songs Morris misses, but the whistlers themselves. "Something cocky has left society, the whistling errand boy, the whistling postman, the whistling housewife in her flowered apron, Pedro himself, all were expressing in their often discordant music something at once communal and defiant." It's a practice that seems ready for a comeback. After all, "whistling not only cheers up the whistler, it invites the world at large to cheer up too."

As a whistler myself, I am sad that there are so few places where a cheerful and tuneful whistle seems accepted.

Greens leader Senator Bob Brown has the Australian Capital Territory (Self Government) Amendment (Disallowance and Amendment Power of the Commonwealth) Bill 2010, which would give the territory's politicians the same rights to legislate as their state colleagues. The ACT Government would strengthen its same-sex civil union legislation if the Governor-General's veto power over local laws were removed.

Under Section 35(2) of the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act 1988, the Governor-General may disallow any enactment of the ACT Legislative Assembly within six months of its passing. This power has been used only once—to disallow the Civil Unions Act 2006 that allowed same-sex unions.

ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope says that civil unions are the one area where discrimination against homosexual couples is still legislated in the ACT. "If there were a change of attitude federally in relation to our right to legislate exactly as we see fit in relation to civil unions, I would not turn my back on that opportunity to restore the provisions that existed in our legislation," Mr Stanhope said.

The ACT Government's compromise with the Commonwealth government related to the way the relationship is formed legal. In heterosexual marriages, the ceremony creates the relationship. In same-sex civil partnerships, the relationship is created by the Registrar-General's acceptance of a registration; 177 civil partnerships have been registered, representing around a tenth of a per cent of the Territory's population.

In a Century Blog (11 Nov 10) Richard A. Kauffman writes of Why I go to church. He goes "first of all to meet God, to be in God's presence", to make connection with other people who share his convictions and commitments, to find meaning in life . . . to be part of something bigger than himself. . . . "I also go for the music."

I also go to church to sing. As John Bell has pointed out, the church is about the only place where people gather to sing anymore. My tradition (Mennonite) has a longstanding practice of singing four-part a cappella hymns. [T]he default still is singing in parts, unaccompanied. Joining our verses together in praise resounds deep within my being. It is then that I sense most assuredly that I am in the presence of God with my people, the ones with whom I am pledged to live out my baptismal vows. What Sister Joan Chittister says is true for my congregation too: "My Benedictine community is a singing community. Maybe that's why we're a community at all, come to think about it."

Now there's a thought . . . hymns a capella, in four part harmony. Not often done in Australia, but I'd like it a lot.

Forget the all-night cramming. If you want to learn, get regular sleep!

A recently published study suggests that sleep helps people to remember a newly learned words and incorporate them into their thinking. But the same principles are likely to apply to other types of learning. Sleep has a role to play in the reorganization of new memories.

J Tamminen, JD Payne, R Stickgold, EJ Wamsley, and MG Gaskell. Sleep Spindle Activity is Associated with the Integration of New Memories and Existing Knowledge. Journal of Neuroscience, Oct 2010; 30: 14356 - 14360.

Abstract:Sleep spindle activity has been associated with improvements in procedural and declarative memory. Here, for the first time, we looked at the role of spindles in the integration of newly learned information with existing knowledge, contrasting this with explicit recall of the new information. Two groups of participants learned novel spoken words (e.g., cathedruke) that overlapped phonologically with familiar words (e.g., cathedral). The sleep group was exposed to the novel words in the evening, followed by an initial test, a polysomnographically monitored night of sleep, and a second test in the morning. The wake group was exposed and initially tested in the morning and spent a retention interval of similar duration awake. Finally, both groups were tested a week later at the same circadian time to control for possible circadian effects. In the sleep group, participants recalled more words and recognized them faster after sleep, whereas in the wake group such changes were not observed until the final test 1 week later. Following acquisition of the novel words, recognition of the familiar words was slowed in both groups, but only after the retention interval, indicating that the novel words had been integrated into the mental lexicon following consolidation. Importantly, spindle activity was associated with overnight lexical integration in the sleep group, but not with gains in recall rate or recognition speed of the novel words themselves. Spindle activity appears to be particularly important for overnight integration of new memories with existing neocortical knowledge.

When the researchers examined whether newly learned words had been integrated with existing knowledge, they discovered the involvement of a different type of activity in the sleeping brain. Sleep spindles are brief but intense bursts of brain activity that reflect information transfer between different memory stores in the brain—the hippocampus deep in the brain and the neocortex, the surface of the brain.

Memories in the hippocampus are stored separately from other memories, while memories in the neocortex are connected to other knowledge. Volunteers who experienced more sleep spindles overnight were more successful in connecting the new words to the rest of the words in their mental lexicon, suggesting that the new words were communicated from the hippocampus to the neocortex during sleep.

New memories are only really useful if you can connect them to information you already know. For this, you need sleep.