In case you're among the guys who had the misfortune of experiencing World of Warcraft's Corrupted Blood plague of 2005, you'll be happy to know that your experience has gone into a research paper that's come into light.

The paper, as strange as it may sound, delves into analyzing the unpredictable human factors that go into a real-life pandemics and is authored by Eric Lofgren of Rutgers University and Nina Fefferman of Tufts University.

For first-time readers not too familiar with the Corrupted Blood Plague, it's actually a debuff caused by Hakkar the Soulflayer, the final boss of the Zul'Gurub instance. The debuff could be passed on to other players who were standing close to the infected person.

While it was supposedly confined to the Zul'Gurub area, a then-existing bug allowed it to be spread to the outside population via hunter pets. As soon as hunters left their pets at the stables, the Corrupted Blood plague also infected the NPCs, who in turn infected everybody who passed by.  

Lofgren and Fefferman's research paper examined how quickly the plague spread within the realms, and how players reacted to the resulting "outbreak".

Other realities that were reflected in WoW's plague were the issues of the failure of quarantine measures, and disease transmission by either the owner's pets, or immune carriers (in WoW's case, the NPCs). Professor Fefferman had this to say regarding the study:

If, God forbid, a disease broke out in London, you could see what would happen if people were told immediately of the risk. Would there be panic and chaos, or would it allow them to psychologically accept the danger and act accordingly? What would happen if we made people feel too reassured?

These are all things that have a great impact on the number of people who would be affected. They are also things we just don’t know, so [virtual games] could be of great value in helping us understand what their true emotional responses would be.

The study is expected to be printed in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal for next month.

 Researchers at the Tufts University in Boston have conducted a new study that may lead to new knowledge on the prevention of blindness through dietary means. The key? Lowering sugar intake.

Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause for the loss of vision in America. It normally happens among people aged 50 to 80 and causes blindness by afflicting the retina which is deep in the center of the eye.

Some 4,100 respondents were observed in the study and eyes were all scanned for AMD. Most had no signs of the disease but more than 600 of them are at risk or had detectable signs. The scientists then checked the sugar levels of the patients and found that high glycogen levels coincided with those possessing signs.

Although there's no conclusive evidence yet of how exactly the disease is triggered by high sugar levels, the research team advises taking in carbohydrates without high glycogen content and vegetables which have antioxidants.

New treatments are available to stop and even restore vision for AMD patients but doctors say that the disease is easier prevented by balancing one's eating habits and making sure that sugar levels remain in check.

After four days of talks in Bangkok, Thailand - government officials from more than a hundred countries, economists, and scientists all agreed that the world needs to reduce harmful emissions to limit centuries of rising temperature and seas caused by the buildup of heat-trapping emissions in the air.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their final report which stated that the slowing of emissions in the soonest possible time could lead to a stabilization of the concentration of carbon dioxide later in the century. Currently, the concentration of CO2 is at 380 parts per million - which has increased by more than a third since the start of the industrial revolution. If we don't act now, this figure could easily double within decades.

The panel agreed that drastic changes in technologies and policies should be implemented in the next 25 years. Two and a half decades aren't enough as a century-long transition to new energy sources that come with no climate impacts should also be done. Panel member Adil Najam said that:

We can no longer make the excuse that we need to wait for more science, or the excuse that we need to wait for more technologies and policy knowledge...To me the big message is that we now have both and we do not need to wait any longer.

Greenhouse gas emissions have risen 70% since 1970 while carbon dioxide production is now at 25 billion tons each year. William Moomaw, a Environmental Policy professor at Tufts University, had this to say:

Here in the early years of the 21st century, we’re looking for an energy revolution that’s as comprehensive as the one that occurred at the beginning of the 20th century when we went from gaslight and horse-drawn carriages to light bulbs and automobiles. In 1905, only 3 percent of homes had electricity. Right now, 3 percent is about the same range as the amount of renewable energy we have today. None of us can predict the future any more than we could in 1905, but that suggests to me it may not be impossible to make that kind of revolution again.

When solving global warming pops up as topic in the political arena, the opposition usually use the argument that solving it would take up too much money, and would eventually cripple the U.S. economy; fair enough - emission laws are stringent enough as it is.

According to this study, though, it seems the reverse is true: Ignoring global warming issues may eventually lead to overwhelming economic losses for the U.S. - as much as $20 trillion a year.

The study, written by the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, states in its report that while the immediate adoption of climate protection measures would lead to a global climate change no more than 2 degrees and eliminate half the damages, ignoring the facts until 2025 would mean that too much environmental damage had been done - by then, it would be far more expensive to repair any drastic climate changes.

What's your say on this, readers? Hurricane Katrina, according to some, was partly caused by the shifting temperatures brought on by global warming. Then we look back at the Kyoto Protocol of 1997...

For a better idea of what the Tuft University's study is all about, click on the source link.