Sverdlovsk anthrax leakOn 2 April 1979, spores of Bacillus anthracis (the causative agent of anthrax) were accidentally released from a Soviet military research facility in the city of Sverdlovsk, Soviet Union (now Yekaterinburg, Russia). The ensuing outbreak of the disease resulted in the deaths of at least 68 people, although the exact number of victims remains unknown. The cause of the outbreak was denied for years by the Soviet authorities, which blamed the deaths on consumption of tainted meat from the area, and subcutaneous exposure due to butchers handling the tainted meat.
Cellular approximation theoremIn algebraic topology, the cellular approximation theorem states that a map between CW-complexes can always be taken to be of a specific type. Concretely, if X and Y are CW-complexes, and f : X → Y is a continuous map, then f is said to be cellular, if f takes the n-skeleton of X to the n-skeleton of Y for all n, i.e. if for all n. The content of the cellular approximation theorem is then that any continuous map f : X → Y between CW-complexes X and Y is homotopic to a cellular map, and if f is already cellular on a subcomplex A of X, then we can furthermore choose the homotopy to be stationary on A.
Disability-adjusted life yearThe disability-adjusted life year (DALY) is a measure of overall disease burden, expressed as the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability or early death. It was developed in the 1990s as a way of comparing the overall health and life expectancy of different countries. The DALY has become more common in the field of public health and health impact assessment (HIA). It not only includes the potential years of life lost due to premature death, but also includes equivalent years of 'healthy' life lost by virtue of being in states of poor health or disability.
