Dr. Robert Putnam, Author of Bowling Alone, at UAlbany Tomorrow

The UAlbany School of Public Health in Rensselaer will host bestselling author Dr. Robert Putnam tomorrow. The event is free and open to the public.

MEET THE AUTHOR:  Harvard University’s Dr. Robert Putnam, the author of Our Kids:  The American Dream in Crisis, will speak at the School of Public Health on Wednesday evening, September 16^th, at 5:00 p.m. in the main auditorium.  Dr. Putnam will sign copies of his books (including his equally well-known Bowling Alone) following his talk.  This event is part of the School of Public Health’s “All School Read” program which began last spring when students chose Our Kids to read over the summer and explore the issues when they returned to classes this fall.  Join us for a lively conversation about the growing inequality of opportunity in the U.S.  Light refreshments will be served.  Haven’t read the book?  You are welcome to come and join the discussion of the timely public health issues raised by Dr. Putnam.  Copies of the book will be available for purchase at a 20% discount from The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza.  Members of book groups and all interested individuals are welcome to attend.  Directions to the School of Public Health are here:  http://www.albany.edu/sph/map_directions.php

For more information contact the School of Public Health:  University At Albany Foundation, 1 University Pl, Rensselaer, NY 12144

(518) 402-0283

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Author Sherry Lee Mueller presents "Working World" 9/19

"Working World is an essential guide to international careers for a new generation of Americans eager to see, feel, and change their world." --  John Zogby, founder of the Zogby Poll

The University at Albany School of Public Health will host Sherry Lee Mueller, coauthor of Working World, 2nd edition (2014). The book explores "how the idea of an international career has shifted: nearly every industry taking on more and more international dimensions, while international skills -- linguistic ability, intercultural management, and sensitivity -- become ever more highly prized by potential employers."

Date: Friday, September 19, 2014

Time: 12:00 noon – 1:15 PM

Location: School of Public Health Auditorium
George Education Center
UAlbany East Campus
1 University Place
Rensselaer, NY 12144

RSVP: Please register and confirm your attendance by emailing sph07@albany.edu by Monday, September 15th

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The Next Big One, Tonight with David Quammen

"By the Next Big One, I mean a murderous pandemic that sweeps around the planet, killing millions of people, as the so-called 'Spanish' influenza did in 1918-19, as AIDS has been doing in slower motion, and as SARS might have done in 2003 if it hadn’t been stopped by fast science, rigorous measures of public health, and luck. Experts I’ve interviewed over the past six years generally agree that such a Next Big One is not only possible but probable.... From where will the Next Big One emerge? Answer, as I’ve noted: Most likely from wildlife. It will be a zoonosis — an animal infection that spills over into humans."

Read more in Yale Environment 360:  http://e360.yale.edu/mobile/feature.msp?id=2579
Quammen visits today at 4:15 and 8PM in the UAlbany Campus Center:
http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#david

Photo from the 1918 flu pandemic.

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Of Bats, Pythons and the Marburg Virus

Read an excerpt from Spillover, David Quammen's new book about emergent pandemics.

Quammen visits the Writers Institute tomorrow, Thursday.

"Astrid Joosten was a 41-year-old Dutch woman who, in June 2008, went to Uganda with her husband. At home in Noord-Brabant, she worked as a business analyst. Both she and her husband, Jaap Taal, a financial manager, enjoyed annual adventures, especially to Africa. The journey in 2008, booked through an adventure-travel outfitter, took them to the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, home to mountain gorillas. While there, the operators offered an optional trip, to a place called the Maramagambo Forest, where the chief attraction was a peculiar site known as Python Cave. African rock pythons lived there, languid and content, grown large and fat on a diet of bats."

More in The Guardian:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/sep/28/deadly-viruses-ebola-marburg-sars

More on Quammen's visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/quammen_david12.html

Picture:  Egyptian fruit bats, Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda

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They're Coming!... The Zoonotic Diseases

Here's a 2007 National Geographic article by David Quammen, who visits Albany tomorrow, about the rise of zoonotic diseases, which "jump" from animals to people-- the subject of his new critically acclaimed book, Spillover (2012).

"In September 1994, a violent disease erupted among racehorses in a suburb of Brisbane, Australia. The place, called Hendra, was a quiet old neighborhood filled with racecourses, stables, newsstands that sell tip sheets, corner cafés with names like The Feed Bin, and racing people. The first victim was a pregnant mare named Drama Series, who started showing symptoms in an outlying pasture and was brought back to her trainer's stable for doctoring, where she only got worse. Three people worked to save her—the trainer himself, his stable foreman, and a veterinarian. Within two days Drama Series died, leaving the cause of her trouble uncertain. Had she been bitten by a snake? Had she eaten some poisonous weeds out in that scrubby, derelict meadow? Those hypotheses were eliminated two weeks later, when most of her stablemates fell ill. This wasn't snakebite or toxic fodder. It was something contagious."

Read more:  http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/10/infectious-animals/quammen-text

More about his visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/quammen_david12.html

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An Embarrassment for the Pulitzer Jury

"Mr. Quammen... is not just among our best science writers but among our best writers, period.... That he hasn’t won a nonfiction National Book Award or Pulitzer Prize is an embarrassment."

So writes Dwight Garner this month in the New York Times.

Read the article here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/books/spillover-by-david-quammen-on-how-animals-infect-humans.html?_r=0

Quammen visits us tomorrow:

David Quammen, nature writer and author
October 18 (Thursday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

David Quammenis one of America’s leading nature writers. His new book is Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (2012), about his travels in the remote corners of the globe with field researchers investigating disease outbreaks in rats, monkeys, bats, pigs, and other species, with the potential to “spillover” to humans. Walter Isaacson described the book as “a frightening and fascinating masterpiece of science reporting that reads like a detective story.” A widely-travelled contributing writer for National Geographic, and the author of the column, “Natural Acts,” for Outside magazine for 15 years, Quammen has written several nonfiction bestsellers, including The Reluctant Mr. Darwin (2006), Monster of God (2003), The Boilerplate Rhino (2001), and The Song of the Dodo (1996).

Cosponsored by UAlbany’s School of Public Health

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