Rotavirus is a genus of double-stranded RNA virus and the leading cause of severe diarrhoea among infants and young children, nearly all of whom have an infection by age five. Rotavirus A, the most common species, causes more than 90 per cent of human infections. Rotavirus is transmitted by the faecal–oral route. It infects cells that line the small intestine and produces an enterotoxin, which induces gastroenteritis, leading to severe diarrhoea and sometimes death through dehydration. Campaigns to combat rotaviruses focus on oral rehydration therapy for infected children and vaccination. Vaccines introduced in the 2000s have reduced the severity of infections in children and lowered hospitalisation rates. Although rotavirus was discovered in 1973 by Ruth Bishop and her colleagues, its importance has historically been underestimated within the public health community, particularly in developing countries. Rotavirus also infects animals and is a pathogen of livestock.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotavirus

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1918:

World War I: The Central Powers' defeat at the Battle of Dobro Pole played a role in the Bulgarian withdrawal from the war and led to the subsequent liberation of Vardar Macedonia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dobro_Pole

1948:

The Australian cricket team's Invincibles tour of England concluded; they had played 34 matches, including five Tests, without defeat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_cricket_team_in_England_in_1948

1974:

Hurricane Fifi struck Honduras, destroying 182 towns and villages in the first 24 hours, and ultimately causing more than 8,000 deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Fifi%E2%80%93Orlene

2014:

Scotland (flag pictured) voted against independence from the United Kingdom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Scottish_independence_referendum

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

particularity: 1. (countable) 2. A particular thing. 3. A distinctive characteristic or quality; a peculiarity. 4. (obsolete) A particular case or matter. 5. (uncountable) 6. The condition of being particular rather than general or universal; specificity. 7. (Christianity, theology) The doctrine of the incarnation of God as Jesus occurring at a particular place and time. 8. (Christianity, Judaism, theology, obsolete) Synonym of particularism (“the principle that only certain people are chosen by God for salvation”) 9. Attention to detail; fastidiousness. 10. (obsolete) 11. The condition of being special; peculiarity, specialness. 12. The condition of being special in an unexpected way; oddness, strangeness; (countable) an instance of this. 13. The paying of particular close attention to someone; (countable) an instance of this. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/particularity

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

You can always tell an old battlefield where many men have lost their lives. The next spring the grass comes up greener and more luxuriant than on the surrounding countryside; the poppies are redder, the corn-flowers more blue. They grow over the field and down the sides of the shell holes and lean, almost touching, across the abandoned trenches in a mass of color that ripples all day in the direction that the wind blows. They take the pits and scars out of the torn land and make it a sweet, sloping surface again. Take a wood, now, or a ravine: In a year's time you could never guess the things which had taken place there. … To me it has always seemed that God is so sickened with men, and their unending cruelty to each other, that he covers the places where they have been as quickly as possible.   --William March https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_March