A decade after SARS swept through the world and killed more than 750 people, scientists have made a troubling discovery: A very close cousin of the SARS virus lives in bats and it can likely jump directly to people.

The findings create new fears about the emergence of diseases like SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome. The virus spread quickly from person to person in 2003 and had a mortality rate of at least 9%. Worries of a severe pandemic led the World Health Organization to issue an emergency travel advisory.

While bats have previously been fingered as a host for SARS, it was believed that the virus jumped from there to weasel-like mammals known as civets, where it went through genetic changes before infecting people. Operating on that belief, China cracked down on markets where bats, civets and other wildlife were sold for food.

A Chinese horseshoe bat. SARS-like coronaviruses were found in a colony of these animals in Yunnan province in southwest China. Dr. Libiao Zhang, Guangdong Entomological Institute/South China Institute of Endangered Animals

The new bat-to-human discovery suggests that the control tactic may have limited effectiveness because a SARS-like virus remains loose in the wild and could potentially spark another outbreak.

"It changes the equation" for public health, said Peter Daszak, a senior author of the study and president of EcoHealth Alliance, a group involved in conservation and global health. "We can close all the markets in China and still have a pandemic."

The latest findings, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, may also help scientists grapple with a more immediate worry. About a year ago, a novel SARS-like virus was reported in the Middle East. It has since killed more than 50 people, and some preliminary research suggests that it also may have originated in bats.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 … 3127982886

It’s become a quarterly ritual: Amazon reports that it’s losing money, and its investors cheer and hand over more. Pundits shake their heads in wonder. And Amazon’s competitors tremble in existential terror.

My colleague Matt Yglesias once half-joked that the company amounts to “a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers.” Bezos denied this, insisting that the interests of Amazon customers and shareholders will align in the long run. One thing nearly everyone agrees on, though: Amazon’s ridiculously low margins cannot be good for its rivals in the retail sector, who aren’t blessed with the same license from investors to lose money quarter after quarter.

I don’t have a lot to add to what Yglesias has already said about the company, except to point out that yet another quarterly earnings report shows Amazon increasing its revenue while failing (or, more accurately, refusing) to make any profit whatsoever. This time it posted $17 billion in net sales, reported a net loss of $41 million, and saw its stock leap nearly 10 percent.

What I can add is this rather mind-boggling chart from the statistics portal Statista.com, which drives home Amazon’s uncanny ability to avoid making money in the clearest form I’ve ever seen. Jeff Bezos is like King Midas in reverse: All the gold he touches turns to something else.

Amazon revenue profits chart
Illustration courtesy of Statista.com

In all seriousness, it must take incredible skill to keep spending every dollar you take in, quarter after quarter, even as your revenues grow by leaps and bounds. This past quarter, the company managed to pull it off by blowing hundreds of millions on a techno-utopian campus, continuing to lose money on its terrible investment in LivingSocial, and hiring an incredible 12,800 new employees in just three months. Its headcount now exceeds that of Microsoft.

This coming quarter will pose perhaps the company’s biggest challenge yet, as Amazon is almost sure to see its revenue leap to a new all-time high over the holidays. But I, for one, have confidence that Bezos will find a way to spend every last dime. The man is a true master of not making money.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense … chart.html