51吃瓜

The singing Babushkas of Buranova have made a name for themselves, first as an Internet sensation and then at the Eurovision competition this year .鈥� Babushka is Russian for grandmother and these women are mostly in their 70s and 80s. Their story is sadly familiar in Russia. Many of these elderly women lost their husbands years ago to alcoholism or hard work. Searching for companionship, the babushkas of Buranova turned to one another and to music.

My own Siberian-born babushka, it must be said, does not go to the trouble of stewing short ribs for eight hours when she makes borscht. Nor does any babushka in my circle incorporate delectably astringent homemade garlic mayo into her spin on herring under a fur coat, an already laborious dish that involves prepping and layering potatoes, carrots, hard-boiled eggs, and beets atop pickled herring.

Four years ago, Pakistan had more than 300 cases of polio. And the government, the United Nations and aid groups started a campaign to eradicate the virus. It is not easy because in order to vaccinate a kid, you need to find the kid several times over many weeks and give several doses of vaccine. So now every few weeks, almost half a million people are going out and trying to vaccinate 38 million children. Things are looking good. There’s only been one polio case this year, but getting down to zero is tough.

Since 2008, Argentina and Chile have agreed that to save their southernmost forests, they must rid them of beavers. Some hunters working to eradicate beavers use snares in addition to rifles. But beavers are smart鈥攖hey sometimes use weeds and sticks to trigger the snares without getting caught themselves.

[Girolamo] Fracastoro believed that diseases were caused by imperceptible seedlike entities 鈥� which could multiply rapidly, propagate quickly, and were unique to each disease. He posited that these seeds could spread in three distinct ways. Firstly, by direct contact (including shaking hands), secondly, by indirect contact through fomites (inanimate objects such as clothing), and lastly over long distances through the air, emphasizing that the thing that binds the three modes of transmission together is that all are 鈥渃ontagious by direct contact.鈥� While some of these ideas had been considered by previous scholars, Fracastoro was the first to fuse the three causes of transmission into a coherent theory of contagion.

I realized that when I took a croissant barehanded I touched only the one that I was going to eat, whereas if I鈥檇 used tongs I鈥檇 have handled an implement that had been touched by every diner who came before me. Tongs are an example of what epidemiologists call fomites鈥攐bjects that convey infectious agents between individuals. And fomites, if you look for them, are just about everywhere: tabletops, doorknobs, toilet seats, stethoscopes. Smooth objects, like tongs, make better fomites than porous ones, like dollar bills, because infectious agents protrude from their surfaces and can be detached more easily.