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The Holy Grail of hemophilia treatment
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/12/Hemophilia-Gene-Therapy.mp3[/podcast] Over more than two decades of science writing, I’ve seen a lot of my past writings rendered obsolete by scientific progress. Case in point: the release last week of a research report on exciting new progress in gene therapy for hemophiliacs. Back in 2001, I wrote a book on hemophilia for the Enslow Publishers series Diseases and People (<brag>School Library Journal called it: “An excellent resource for basic research for personal or academic use.”</brag>). Gene therapy—the insertion of genes into living cells in the human body to treat disorders—has always seemed to hold particular promise for the treatment of hemophilia because it is a genetic disease: you can’t catch it, you can only ...The Black Death
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2011/09/The-Black-Death.mp3[/podcast]Confessions of a cyberchondriac
A few years ago I wrote several children's books for the Diseases and People series put out by Enslow Publishers. It's amazing when you're writing about disease how easy it is to convince yourself you've got the symptoms of whatever you're writing about. The first book was Meningitis. Stiff neck? You bet. Of course, I was sitting and typing for hours on end, but I'm sure that was just a coincidence. I also wrote Arthritis (my fingers are still stiff), Ebola Virus (Ebola starts with flu-like symptoms; gee, thanks, that's specific!), Alzheimer's Disease (which I can barely even remember writing) and Hemophilia, ...A treatment for Ebola?
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2010/06/A-Treatment-for-Ebola.mp3[/podcast] A few years ago I wrote several books for Enslow Publishers in New Jersey for a series called Diseases and People. I covered meningitis, arthritis, hemophilia...and Ebola. My most recent book for Enslow, Disease-Hunting Scientist, also talks about Ebola, and some of the scientists who travel to the sites of outbreaks to help with containment efforts. Ask someone on the street to name a particularly deadly disease, and there’s a good chance he’ll say “Ebola.” Yet of the diseases I wrote about, the biggest killer by far is meningitis, the bacterial form of which kills some 170,000 people every year, according to the World Health Organization. (And if you want even bigger killers, in sub-Saharan Africa alone tuberculosis kills some 5,000 ...Disease-Hunting Scientists: Jonathan Epstein and the search for SARS
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/05/jonathan-epstein-and-sars.mp3[/podcast] My next book, due out this summer from Enslow Publishers, is entitled Disease-Hunting Scientist: Careers Hunting Deadly Diseases. Each of its chapters focuses on one particular scientist whose work is related to hunting disease. The chapters are much longer than these science columns, but I thought in honour of the book’s release, I’d try over the next little while to boil down some of those chapters into columns. Call it the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books Version—not just condensed, but extremely condensed! One chapter focuses on Jonathan Epstein, a veterinarian epidemiologist with the Consortium for Conservation Medicine. In 2005, he led the first of five expeditions into China that eventually determined that bats were the “natural reservoir” of the ...An instantaneous, universal, programmable vaccine?
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/a-universal-instant-vaccine.mp3[/podcast] Efforts to immunize people against disease go back to at least 600 B.C., when the Chinese attempted to immunize people against smallpox by putting smallpox material in their nostrils (the permitting of which, I would think, would require a great deal of faith in your doctor). Modern immunization began in 1796 when a British physician, Edward Jenner, noting that people who had had the much-less-deadly cowpox did not catch smallpox, inserted material from cowpox sores into the arm of a healthy eight-year-old boy. The boy caught cowpox, but when he was exposed to smallpox eight weeks later, he did not contract the often-fatal disease. Vaccines have since become a mainstay of public health. Their impact has been enormous. Consider measles: in 2007, ...Title page of my next children’s non-fiction book
Just got the PDF of the rough layout of what will probably* be my next-published children's non-fiction book, Disease-Hunting Scientist: Careers Hunting Deadly Diseases--that's the title page at left. It's part of a series from Enslow Publishers called Wild Science Careers.It's been interesting to work on, since I got to interview several scientists who have studied diseases as varied as Marburg, Ebola, bird flu, SARS and black-band disease in coral. The focus of the series is on scientists who work "in the field," as opposed to just in a lab, so these men and women have travelled all over the world, waded through swamps, camped out in the ...Why is winter the flu season?
Scientists may have finally figured out why there's a "flu season," why flu is so much more prevalent during the cold months:Dr. Zimmerberg and his colleagues found that at temperatures slightly above freezing, the virus's lipid covering solidified into a gel. As temperatures approach 60 degrees Fahrenheit, the covering gradually thaws, eventually melting to a soupy mix.Cooler temperatures, apparently, cause the virus to form the rubbery outer covering that can withstand travel from person to person, Dr. Zimmerberg said. Once in the respiratory tract, the warm temperature in the body causes the covering to melt to its liquid form, so that the virus can infect the cells of its new host, he added.This ...What’s it like in Level 4?
Download the audio version.Get my science column weekly as a podcast.***It’s a staple of movies and TV shows: the Level 4 lab, where scientists in “space suits” race against the clock to find a cure for a mysterious ailment.But what’s it like to work in a Level 4 laboratory in real life?Dr. James Strong knows. He’s head of the cell biology section of the department of special pathogens at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, where he is researching how Ebola is transmitted from animals to humans.Strong spends a couple of hours in the Level 4 lab more days than not, and I recently had a chance ...Here’s hoping it works!
A universal 'flu vaccine is in the first stage of human tests:This vaccine is intended to provide protection against all ‘A’ strains of the virus that causes human influenza, including pandemic strains.***At the moment, Phase I clinical trials on humans are underway - that is, the candidate vaccine is being administered to a small group of healthy people in order to verify the safety of the product and to provide an initial insight into the vaccine’s effect on the human immune system.***...they hope that annual flu vaccines can ultimately be replaced by the new, universal flu vaccine. The goal for this vaccine is that two inoculations would suffice to protect ...
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Magebane
“Spectacular” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Evil wizards, multi-level conspiracies, hidden kingdoms…Lee Arthur Chane…has done a marvelous job…Magebane is a very entertaining book and well worth the time.” – A.M. Donovan, Night Owl Reviews
I happily recommend Magebane and I’ll certainly give Chane’s next novel a try based on this one.” —Bill Capossere, Fantasy Literature
“…an original and delightful tale of epic fantasy and magic, steampunk science, adventure, tragedy, and love…” – Errant Dreams Reviews
Eight centuries ago, the world changed. A devastating war swept the lands, and the MageLords, who had long ruled by virtue of their spell powers, were driven to a distant place, separated from those they had ruled by a magical Barrier. With magic banished from the rest of the world, the MageLords became mere legend and people turned to science to improve their lives. But if one man has his way, all that is about to change….
Written as Lee Arthur Chane (the middle names of my older brothers, Jimmy Lee and Dwight Arthur, and myself, Edward Chane Willett).
Marseguro
Winner of the 2009 Prix Aurora Award for Best Long-Form Work in English
Water world Marseguro is home to the Selkies, a water-dwelling race created from human DNA. When an unmodified human seeks revenge on a Selkie by activating a distress beacon taken from the remains of the original colony ship, a strikeforce is sent from Earth to eradicate the genetic abomination. Yet Marseguro will not prove as easy to conquer as the Earth force anticipates…
Terra Insegura
Finalist for the 2010 Prix Aurora Award for Best Novel in English
Marseguro, a water world far from Earth, is home to a colony of humans and the Selkies, a water-dwelling race created from modified human DNA. For seventy years the colony has lived in peace. Then Earth discovers Marseguro, and a strike force is sent to eradicate this “abomination.” But Marseguro has created a genetically tailored plague to use against Earth’s Holy Warriors. With the enemy defeated, the people of Marseguro feel they are safe. But Chris Keating, the traitor who signaled Marseguro’s location to the Holy Warriors, has fled to Earth, unknowingly carrying the deadly plague within him. The people of Marseguro feel they must send a ship to Earth with a life-saving vaccine. Only time will tell what awaits them when they reach their destination.
Lost in Translation
Kathryn was a human empath whose world and life had been destroyed when the alien S’sinn slaughtered her parents before her very eyes. Jarrikk was a young S’sinn, an unproven warrior who’d seen his flight mates slaughtered by the humans who’d sought to colonize his world.
As humans and S’sinn found themselves on the brink of war, these two Translators had to work together to find a common ground and avert catastrophe. But whether their Translators’ oath and training could overcome the enemies leagued against them was very much in doubt…
Archives
Song of the Sword
My new YA fantasy novel from Lobster Press
Before the Lady called her, Ariane’s life was a mess. Two years ago, her mother disappeared. She bounced around different foster homes until her aunt finally took her in. The meanest clique at her new high school has decided to make Ariane their prime target. And to top it all off, she is having frightening premonitions, and they are becoming more intense. The moment water touches her skin, she sees visions of a lake, a lady, and a sword. When a staircase opens up in the middle of Wascana Lake and the water begins singing to her, she has no choice but to answer the call….
Historic Walks of Regina and Moose Jaw
Ten walks to points of historic and architectural interest in the cities of Regina and Moose Jaw (eight walks for Regina, two for Moose Jaw).
Johnny Cash: The Man in Black
When country music legend Johnny Cash took the stage at Folsom State Prison in 1968, he solidified the public’s perception of him as a rebel who followed his own path. Born in Arkansas during the Great Depression, Cash endured poverty, the death of his older brother, and a difficult relationship with his father. He turned to gospel and country music to express the pain, and after many years of struggling, his songs of hardship and hope would finally reach the ears of those waiting for an artist who represented them, ordinary people fighting to survive.
Andy Warhol: Everyone Will Be Famous for 15 Minutes
“Paintings are too hard. Machines have less problems…” In the 1960s, Andy Warhol became the most famous creator of a new style of art called pop art, which transformed mass-produced items of popular culture into fine works of art. From Campbell’s Soup cans to photographs of Marilyn Monroe, Warhol’s willingness to use anything and everything from the mass media in his work expanded the range of subject matter available to artists. His avant-garde films, artistic usage of American icons, and unconventional social life made him a controversial figure, both greatly admired and deeply reviled. A trendsetter rather than a trend-follower, a dispassionate observer of both the seamy and celebrity sides of life, Warhol was a true American rebel.
Disease-Hunting Scientist
The true stories of six real disease hunters. Epidemiologists travel the world trying to keep us safe from deadly diseases—from high-tech labs in Canada to remote villages in Africa. Learn how these “disease detectives” are coming up with new ways to fight disease, and find out if you have what it takes to become an epidemiologist, too!
The Bounty Mutiny
The Bounty was a British ship visiting Tahiti in 1789 when some of the crew overthrew the captain, William Bligh, and set him adrift in a tiny boat with sailors loyal to him. The mutiny resulted in a number of trials–both of the men who mutinied and of Bligh for losing command of his ship. These fascinating events have been the source for numerous Hollywood movies, most recently The Bounty. The Bounty Mutiny: From the Court Case to the Movie explores the famous case and the movies it inspired.
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