When we think about improved quality of living, we also think about safety and security from diseases. But as it turns out, the more that  humans depend on modern medicine, the more they become more and more susceptible to diseases. Increased contact with wildlife resulting from increasing population also contributes to deadly outbreaks as well. Read more about it in the full article.

Wheezing megabats, Batman! An analysis into the evolutionary history of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) has opened up significant revelations as to where the virus could have originated, and this time it isn't from our scientifically linked branch swinging, banana loving cousins. In fact, scientists think that SARS may have originated from bats. Let's head over to the full story for more enlightenment, before y'all go saying, "I thought it was them cats."

What's cute, cuddly, pink, and fluffy - and don't say a Pink PSP. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, at least  650 million pets arrive legally, a list which includes kangaroos, exotic fishes and birds. Illegally, we're looking at larger numbers of exotic pets landing stateside in an international black market that earns up to US$ 10 billion a year - second only to the drug trade.

"A wild animal will be in the bush, and in less than a week it's in a little girl's bedroom," says Darin Carroll, an inspector working for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Venomous pets aside, the biggest killer Carroll's after is disease - exotic pets from Africa, Asia and South America can potentially carry equally exotic disease, possibly passed on from pets to the humans who handle them..."Outbreak" comes to mind.

The list should give ideas on what's already landed due to the exotic pet trade:

• Hantavirus,which is carried by rodents and can cause acute respiratory problems or death, has sickened at least 317 Americans and killed at least 93 since 1996.
• More than 770 people have been sickened since 2000 with tularemia, a virulent disease that can be contracted from rabbits, hamsters and other rodents. At least three people have died.
• Three transplant patients in New England died last year after receiving organs from a human donor who had been infected with the lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus from a pet hamster. There have been 34 U.S. cases since 1993.

Other potentially lethal diseases as of 2001 include the Avian flu, which was found on eagles being smuggled into Europe; SARS, which was detected in cats in a Chinese market; monkeypox, a variation of smallpox that Carroll found on infected U.S. citizens in the Midwest who had been handling rodents smuggled from Africa.

The biggest problem with this growing trade is its lack of personnel - at present the government has just 120 full-time inspectors to check incoming wildlife for any potential disease. What confounds this growing problems is lack of government oversight for it, along with the local populace's lack of awareness.

In many cultures, eating wild animals is part of their tradition. These traditions deserved to be respected but when endangered animals are involved, we think these age-old practices should be strictly regulated or even stopped to allow animal populations to recover.

Shark fin soup is a good example of an environmentally-destructive dish. That's just the appetizer.

In southern China, the joke goes, the Cantonese will eat anything with four legs except a table. Some Chinese restaurants in Jiangmen offer alligators, slugs, and sea turtle (about US$ 21 per kilogram). They also eat palm civet, which proved disastrous when the animals passed the SARS virus to humans.

But you don't have to go to China to find endangered cuisine. Some nutcase proposed to establish a group called ELEAWTA (Eating Lethal and Endangered Animals While They're Alive). We're not sure if he was serious or what but there are supposedly super-secret clubs out there that get together just to dine on endangered species. Talk about bad taste!

Most endangered animals are eaten not for their flavor but for prestige and because of some supposed health benefits such as improving the sex drive. Most of these so-called health benefits are unfounded. The eyes, whiskers, bones, eyes, and other parts of the tiger are used in traditional Chinese medicine to cure treat insomnia, malaria, meningitis, rheumatism, ulcer, typhoid, and other ailments. The demand fuels illegal trade and poaching.

The list of endangered animals that you probably didn't know end up on someone's dinner plate after the jump.

The slump in air travel that followed the 9/11 attacks delayed the influenza season of that year, according to researchers from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.

The study provides the first evidence on the effect of air travel on the spread of flu and could support enforcement of air travel restrictions in cases of outbreak of pandemic diseases.

Using nine years of weekly influenza and pneumonia mortality data (1996 to 2005), the researchers measured the rate of influenza spread across nine regions and related them to estimates of air travel volume.

They found the national peak date for flu mortality in 2001-02 came in early March -  13 days later than the previous average. The peak then gradually returned to February.

The researchers also found out that seasonal flu spread more slowly when the number of domestic air travelers was low and it peaks later when the number of international air travelers was lower.

What does this all mean? Researchers say airline passenger volume explains about 60% of the year-to-year variation in the spread of flu across the country. The study also suggests, in case of bird flu outbreak, limiting domestic airline volume may have help reduce its spread across regions.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, better known as SARS, is one such epidemic that spread through air travel. First reported in Asia in February 2003. The virus quickly spread to more than two dozen countries in Asia, North America, South America, and Europe. When the Global Outbreak of 2003 was finally contained, 8,098 people worldwide became sick with SARS, leaving 774 people dead.