CARTA Glossary

A RNA virus that causes West Nile Fever and is a from the genus Flavivirus, which also contains the Zika Virus, Dengue Virus, and Yellow Fever Virus. WNV is primarily transmitted by mosquitoes with birds as the primary hosts.

Areas of the central nervous system that affects learning and brain functions, modulating the distribution of action potentials, and acting as a relay and coordinating communication between different brain regions. White matter development peaks in middle age in humans.

A French feral child who was captured in 1800 at the estimated age of twelve. A young physician, Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, worked with the boy for five years and gave him his name, Victor. Itard was interested in determining what Victor could learn and devised procedures to teach words and recorded his progress. Based on his work with Victor, Itard broke new ground in the education of the developmentally delayed. Victor is estimated to have been born around 1788 and Itard reported he was a normal child at birth but later he was neglected by his alcoholic parents at an early age, and he left to the wild. Recent commentary by Uta Frith, a German developmental psychologist at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, postulates that Victor displayed signs of autism.

Amala (1918-21) and Kamala (1912-1929) were two feral girls from Bengal, India, who were alleged to have been raised by a wolf family. There is much controversy to the veracity of the girls’ wolf story.

The product of force and displacement (distance).

One of the two allosomes of the mammalian genome that determine sex. The X-chromosome can be inherited maternally and paternally.

A viral disease caused by Yellow Fever Virus and spread by female Aedes mosquitos. Typically, short in duration, symptoms include fever, chills, loss of appetite, nausea, muscle pains particularly in the back, and headaches. In some cases, a relapse of Yellow Fever will occur, causing abdominal pain and liver damage that results in yellow skin (see Jaundice).

The gram-negative bacterium that causes the plague, which takes three main forms: pneumonic, septicemic and bubonic.

An RNA virus of the genus Flavivirus that causes Zika Fever and is spread by Aedes mosquitos. It was first identified in 1947 in the Zika Forest of Uganda, from which it was named. Zika virus is related to the Dengue, Yellow Fever, Japanese Encephalitis, and West Nile Viruses. Traditionally, Zika virus occurred within a narrow equatorial belt from Africa to Asia but spread to the Americas causing the 2015–2016 Zika virus epidemic. Origin: Africa.

A disease which can be transmitted to humans from animals.