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WHILE it is widely believed that smallpox was eradicated from the planet in 1979, the truth is that the virus resides, officially, in two high-security freezers — in Atlanta and Siberia.

And there are illegal stocks in Iraq and North Korea, and terrorists. Worse, with genetic engineering, they could now be creating a superpox, resistant to vaccines. Thus frightens the back cover of Richard Preston's `terrifying truth about the threat from bioterrorism' in the book The Demon in the Freezer. More:

This was a forensic investigation of a crime scene, so the team members did forensic triage. They wrapped the envelope and the letter in sheets of aluminium foil, put them in Ziploc bags, and put evidence labels on the bags.

They cut out a piece of the carpet with a utility knife. They put all the evidence into white plastic containers. Each container was marked with the biohazard symbol and was sealed across the top with a strip of red evidence tape.

When epidemiologists study the spread of infectious diseases, they work with mathematical models. A key in any of these models is the average number of new people who catch the disease from each infected person.

This number is technically called R-zero but more simply is called the multiplier of the disease.

The human genome, coiled up in the chromosomes of every typical cell in the human body, consists of about three billion letters of DNA, or perhaps 40,000 active genes. No one is certain how many active genes human DNA has in it. The letters in the human genome would fill around ten thousand copies of Moby-Dick.

Ebola viruses are grown in plastic well plates containing a liquid cell-culture medium. In the bottom of the wells there is a carpet of living human cells, alive and bathed in the liquid. The cells are HeLa cells, cervical-cancer cells derived from an African-American woman named Henrietta Lacks, who died in Baltimore in 1951. Her cancer cells have become a cornerstone of medical research and had saved many human lives.

Plague and smallpox are not tactical weapons. They can't be used in any sort of limited attack; they are designed to go out of control. They are intended to kill large numbers of people indiscriminately, and they have no other function. At the end of the day, you can deal with anthrax because it is not transmissible in people, but plague and smallpox are entirely different matters.

Chilling stuff.

Heart of service

HOW to get to "the heart of the matter in customer service"? Holly Stiel has the answers in Neon Signs of Service. There is a Sanskrit word `prajnapardha' which means `crimes against wisdom', writes Holly in the intro. "It isn't enough just to know the wisdom. You must commit yourself to living it, acting on it and just as importantly, forgiving yourself when you commit crimes against it." Read on:

You don't have to want to praise people; you just have to do it if you want to be successful. One thing you can do to activate the power of "Thank you very much" in your life is to take a moment to stop and appreciate the service people you come in contact with every day.

Plain truths, neon-lit.

High ranges

MOUNTAINS hold a charm always, as if beckoning those on the plains to behold it, and teasing those on its slopes to reach the peak.

Ravina Aggarwal has put together essays by authors whose imaginations have been fired by high reaches in Into the High Ranges. Excerpts:

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