GIDEON

08/26/2026

Infectious disease pressure changes how companies behave.

Across nearly 20,000 firms in 37 countries, those operating where pathogen prevalence is higher were less likely to adopt environmental sustainability practices.

Business ethics research has long examined culture, regulation and incentives. This paper adds biology to the list: https://na2.hubs.ly/H074g_v0

GIDEON is proud to support this paper with its data.

Despite their potential significance, bio-ecological determinants of ethical and sustainable business behavior have been largely unexplored in business ethics research. This study examines the impact of pathogen stress—a bio-ecological factor that has been shown to be critical for human attitudes,...

08/25/2026

Build your own epidemiological charts using 63,000+ graphs across hundreds of infectious diseases, now with regional and state-level data for many countries.

Two details matter for anyone publishing: click any point on a graph to see its reference. Download a or and an AMA-style GIDEON citation comes with it.
https://na2.hubs.ly/H074Yls0

08/24/2026

How does the so-called brain-eating amoeba get into the body?
A) Swallowing contaminated water
B) Through a cut on the foot
C) Up the nose

https://na2.hubs.ly/H074-xb0

Heard about the brain-eating amoeba, Naegleria fowleri? This deadly killer has a 97% mortality rate and thrives in warm, freshwater bodies. Learn more.

08/21/2026

🍄 In 1945 Giuseppe Brotzu, a Sardinian professor, wondered why people swimming near a Cagliari sewage outfall were not falling ill as often as expected.

He sampled the water and isolated a fungus, then called acremonium. It produced something that killed Salmonella and Staphylococcus.

That compound became the , one of the most widely used antibiotic families in medicine.

Drug discovery has a long history of looking where nobody wanted to look.

08/20/2026

On 20 August 1897 Ronald Ross found malaria parasites in the gut of an Anopheles mosquito, proving the disease transmission.

The remains the deadliest animal on earth by a wide margin, and the list keeps growing: malaria, dengue, Zika, chikungunya, yellow fever, West Nile, Oropouche.

Track them all with GIDEON: https://na2.hubs.ly/H074gVQ0

08/19/2026

The virus did not change. We did.

is one of the most contagious pathogens known. Nine in ten unvaccinated people exposed will catch it, and it lingers in a room for two hours after the infected person has left. Two doses of MMR are 97% effective, and communities need roughly 95% coverage to stop it circulating.

The part most people miss is immune amnesia. Measles depletes immune memory cells, so a child who recovers can stay vulnerable to other infections for months or years afterwards.

Full explainer, with symptoms, diagnosis and the vaccine evidence, on the GIDEON blog: https://na2.hubs.ly/H074Z4L0

Measles is highly contagious but also preventable. Learn the symptoms, risks, and how the MMR vaccine keeps communities safe from measles.

08/18/2026

Lassa fever crossed international borders 57 times in 56 years.
Mapping 84 migratory cases from 1969 to 2025, researchers found tourism drove 61% of intercontinental spread by air, while land travel carried the virus within . Secondary transmission stayed rare wherever infection control held.

The recommendation is practical: replace blanket border measures with targeted screening at hub and bridge countries. https://na2.hubs.ly/H074gxw0

GIDEON is proud to support this paper with its data.

08/17/2026

Plague doctors wore beaked masks. What was actually inside the beak?
A) Vinegar-soaked bread
B) Dried flowers and herbs
C) Ground pearl

https://na2.hubs.ly/H074ZK90

Plague Tales: Yersinia Pestis and what you need to know.

08/14/2026

🍄 Did you know? Fungi and animals share a more recent common ancestor than fungi and plants do. Both belong to a group called the . Fungi build their cell walls from chitin, the same polymer that forms insect exoskeletons, not the cellulose of plants.

They also cannot photosynthesise. Like us, they digest.

That kinship is precisely why antifungal drugs are hard: what poisons a fungal cell often bothers ours too.

08/13/2026

Some people rarely get seriously ill from common infections. Their genes may explain why.

Researchers combined HLA-II immunopeptidomics with antibody profiles from around 1,500 people, then tested the pattern in the UK Biobank. Those carrying HLA-II molecules with a broad peptide-binding range had fewer severe infections and up to 45% lower incidence of disease caused by common pathogens.
Immune diversity, measured at the molecular level, becomes a usable risk factor.

GIDEON is proud to support this paper with its data.

https://na2.hubs.ly/H074g3Q0

Human leukocyte antigen class II (HLA-II) are involved in the presentation of peptides to helper T cells which guide in the B cell response and antibody production. Here Magyari et al, show that HLA-II peptide binding diversity impacts the humoral immune response and susceptibility to infection.