Bio-terrorist viruses
The virus in the episode is a fictitious strain called an immuno-pulmonary virus. This is similar to the Hantavirus. Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) has been recognised as a disease only recently in North America. It is fairly uncommon and the chances of being infected are low even though it is potentially deadly.

HPS is carried by rodents, especially the deer mouse. You can become infected by exposure to their droppings and the first signs of sickness (especially fever and muscle aches) appear one to five weeks later, followed by shortness of breath and coughing. The disease them progresses rapidly necessitating ventilation and hospitalisation within 24 hours.

Prevention is the best strategy, taking simple steps to minimise contact with rodents. HPS is not contagious from person to person in the occidental world.

Bio-terrorist incident protocol
The FBI has been designated to handle all suspected incidents of bio-terrorism. There would also be a State Health Official in charge of response available 24 hours a day to all local health departments.

Local health care workers are on the lookout for red flags, which include unusual diseases, large numbers of people with the same disease and a high death rate. The health care agency notifies the State Health Department and the Centre for Disease Controls. If the bio-terrorism incident is confirmed, or thought to be probable, the FBI is brought in.

Heroin withdrawal
Withdrawal, which, in regular users, may occur as early as a few hours after the first administration, produces drug craving, restlessness, muscle and bone pain, dilated pupils, watery eyes, runny nose, insomnia, diarrhoea and vomiting, loss of appetite, cold flashes with goose bumps, tremours, muscle cramps as well as other symptoms.

Major symptoms occur 48 to 72 hours after the last dose and subside after about a week. Sudden withdrawal by heavily dependant users in poor health can be fatal but is considered less dangerous than alcohol withdrawal. As the withdrawal progresses elevations in blood pressure, pulse, respiratory rate and temperature occur. Symptoms of overdose which can result in death include shallow breathing, clammy skin, convulsions and coma.

Heroin can cause feelings of depression, which may last for weeks. Attempts to stop using heroin can fail simply because the withdrawal can be overwhelming, causing the addict to use more heroin in an attempt to overcome these symptoms. This overpowering addiction can cause an addict to do anything to get heroin.

Detention Centre
The Federal Bureau of Prisons operates institutions of several different security levels to house a broad spectrum of offenders. Security levels are based on such features as the presence of exterior patrols, gun towers, security barriers, detection devices and the staff-to-inmate radio. Each facility is placed in one of five groups of security minimum, low, medium, high, and administrative.

The real Metropolitan Detention Centre is located in downtown Los Angeles. It is considered administrative because it handles a variety of security levels. The MDC would house pre-trial and holdover inmates, such as Salazar.

Russian Roulette
Russian Roulette is a particularly grim game of chicken, in which a revolver is loaded with a single bullet. A player spins the cylinder, puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger. Anyone who goes through with this game is either dead or crazy.

The first known reference in print is 'Russian Roulette', a fictional short story by Georges Surdez in the January 1937 issue of Collier’s Magazine. Not only was Russia losing the battle in 1917, but officers felt they were being dishonoured before their colleagues. In the story, someone would suddenly pull out his revolver, remove one bullet and spin it. He had five chances to one that a live cartridge would kill him if fired at his temple. The version with the single bullet is also played in Surdez’s story. Even, so, there is little evidence that this story is grounded in historical fact.

Presidential Debates
Presidential debates are really a modern TV- age creation. For most of the 18th century, any campaigning or canvassing was directly frowned upon by the public and newspapers. Important debates were limited to the congress, where the issues of the day were discussed at length on the House and Senate floor. Presidential candidates were expected to keep quiet. It was not until 1840 that a presidential candidate, (William Henry Harrison of the Whig Party) even campaigned for his own election.

Las Nieves
Las Nieves is a small town in the state of Durango, Mexico, in the Northwest part of the country, close to the Californian border. It sits just south of the state of Chihuahua.

Topography
Topography is the graphic representation of the surface features of a place on a map which indicates land surfaces and elevations. Topographic overlays use symbols and colouring, with particular attention given to the shape and elevations of terrain. Elevations and depressions are portrayed by means of contour lines, hachures, shading, or colouring. This also helps indicate depths of water. Natural and human-made features, such as rivers, forests, urbanised areas, bridges, roads, and power lines are also indicated.

Campaign Contributions
According to the current Federal Election Campaign laws, an individual is only allowed to contribute up to $2,000 per candidate per election. However, additional donations of $1,000 towards personal travel and $1,000 for a hospitality fundraiser are allowed.

Individuals may also give up to $25,000 a year to a national political entity such as the Republican National Committee, and $10,000 a year to a state part committee. Prior to the 2002 Campaign Reform Act, 'soft money' donations of any amount were permitted. This money would be used for voter registration drives or campaigns to benefit candidates in federal elections. This practice is now illegal. It is also illegal for banks, corporations or labour organisations to make contributions in connection with federal elections, although individual memebers may give up to $95,000 per tw-year cycle to a PAC. These are political committees with specific agendas that make contributions to candidates. Corporations and labour unions are not permitted to use their own treasury funds to contribute to PACs.

Cauterize Wounds
Doctors and medical practitioners have known for centuries that bleeding can be stopped by applying intense heat. Hot irons, for example, were once used to cauterise wounds sustained on the battlefield. In modern operating theatres, surgeons stop blood vessels from haemorrhaging by passing an intense electric current through the tissue – a technique know as electrocautery. In both cases, the changes in the structure of the blood vessels and the surrounding tissue are responsible for stopping the haemorrhaging. When the heat is applied, the blood vessels first shrink, then blood clots form and, finally, the vessels shut off so that the blood cannot flow through them.

In a 1926 first aid guide from the American Red Cross, it was recommended to hunters that they cauterise bullet wounds with gunpowder. Hunters were advised to remove a bullet from a cartridge separate the bullet casinos and pour the gunpowder into the wound. Then, they were told to ignite the powder with a match.

Swiss Bank Accounts
Swiss banks welcome accounts from foreign residents all over the world. The main reason for having a Swiss bank account is to keep one’s financial status a secret. The Swiss have some of the tightest regulations in the world regarding who can gain access to your account.

Unlike American law, where law enforcement agencies, the judicial system, and private citizens can gain access to all sorts of information, the Swiss laws enforce that neither the bank’s officers nor employees are allowed to reveal any information relative to an account to anyone, including the Swiss government. The Swiss consider tax evasion and many other US crimes as ‘political offences’. Things like divorce, inheritance disputes and bankruptcy cases are considered examples of private matters, and as such the secrecy of the account is protected from any legal action to verify assets or attempts at seizure. Three types of activity are exceptions: organised crime activities, drug trafficking and insider dealing. They are bound by treaty with the US to open accounts for possible legal proceedings in these cases, although Swiss authorities have the final say.

US residents are able to claim back 30% of the 35% tax levied on interest in Swiss bank accounts by the Swiss authorities. To claim this, the account holder must identify himself.

Spectroscope
When laser light bounces off some materials, most of the scattered light has the same wavelength as the incident light. But a fraction called the Raman spectrum has an altered wavelength due to the characteristic vibration of some molecules in the material. A spectroscope is a device that uses a technique called Raman spectroscopy to identify the parts within a studied object or gas.

Researchers study living cells in the same way. The spectroscope uses the same laser beam to illuminate on the cell and analyse the optical spectrum in the scattered light, from which information about species, structures and molecular conformations can be provided.

Voice Over Internet Protocol
Internet telephony is communications services, such as voice, fax or voice-messages that are transported via the Internet, rather than the public switched telephone network (PSTN). The basic steps involved in originating an Internet telephone call is to first convert the analogue voice signal to digital format and then compress and translate the signal into Internet protocol (IP) packets for transmission over the Internet. The process is reversed at the receiving end.

Originally regarded as a novelty, Internet telephony is attracting users because it offers tremendous cost savings relative to the PSTN. Users can bypass long distance carriers and their per-minute usage rates and run their voice traffic over the Internet for a flat monthly fee. Unfortunately, right now that level of reliability and sound quality is not available on the Internet, primarily because of bandwidth limitations. In voice communications, this could appear in the form of gaps or periods of silence leading to a clipped-speech effect.

Angina
Angina (chest pain) is not a heart attack, but may be a warning of an impending one. Angina occurs when the heart muscle is not receiving enough oxygen, and coronary artery disease causes chest pain. With angina, however, no permanent damage is done to the heart muscle. Approximately 6.2 million people on the U.S. have been diagnosed with angina. The symptoms of angina are similar to those of heart attack. They are most commonly described as a squeezing, burning, tightness, fullness or pressure across the chest. This discomfort may radiate to the shoulder, arms, neck, jaw, teeth, earlobes as well as the upper back between the shoulder blades. Numbness or tingling in the arms or hands may occur. Angina can be mistaken for indigestion. It occurs with exertion and resolves with rest. Usually it only lasts a few minutes. Sometimes an onset can occur during a heavy meal, cold weather or increased emotional stress. This is called stable angina. Unstable angina exists when the angina worsens. This condition can quickly lead to a heart attack. Nitrates (such as nitroglycerin) are used to relieve chest pain.

Soviet Biowarfare
After more than 100 nations signed the biological and toxin weapons convention of 1972, the Soviet Union was caught violating this treaty in 1979 when a cloud of Anthrax spores was accidentally released in Sverdlovsk. The Soviet government publicly blamed contaminated meat, but U.S. intelligence sources suspected the outbreak was linked to secret weapons work at a nearby army lab.

Nearly 100 people died, but the numbers were obscured because of Cold War secrecy. News of the immensity of the Soviets’ biological weapons program began to reach the West in 1989, when the biologist Vladimir Pasechnik defected to Britain. He told stories of genectically altered “superplagues”, antibiotic resistant Anthrax and long-range missiles designed to spread disease. These were later confirmed by defectors like Ken Alibek and Sergei Popov.

The Soviet program was spread over dozens of facilities and involved tens of thousands of specialists. In the late 1980s and 1990s many of these scientists became free agents with dangerous knowledge for sale.

Incubation Periods
The incubation period is the amount of time between infection with a virus or bacteria to the start of the symptoms. The incubation periods of several diseases are:

SARS - about 10 days
Ebola virus - anywhere from 2 to 21 days, although 7-14 days is the most common interval
Smallpox - 12 days
Common cold - 2-5 days
Measles - 8-12 days
Chicken pox - 14-16 days
Influenza - 1-2 days

Go
The board game of Go was developed in China between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago. Go, which is called Wei Ch'i in China and Baduk in Korea, was taken to Japan 1,200 to 1,400 years ago, reportedly by Buddhist priests who had visited China.

The Go board must have a grid of 19 horizontal and 19 vertical lines. The players alternate in placing black and white stones on the intersections, not the rectangles of the grid. The 180 white stones and 181 black stones must be round.

The object of the game is to acquire territory, or points. To play the game, you must surround areas by occupying adjacent intersections. You can also capture your opponents' stones by surrounding them with your stones. The more stones you capture add to your points. Stones are never moved, and only removed if they are completely surrounded. While the rules of this intellectual game can be learned in minutes, it is said that it takes a lifetime to master Go.

Suicide Pills
Field agents and military personnel sometimes carry suicide pills to prevent secrets from falling into enemy hands during capture. Some terrorists have been known to implant the pill under a tooth so that biting down hard will cause the toxin to be released.

The CIA began experimenting with the drug Saxitoxin as a suicide pill in the 1950's, and it was rumoured that they provided it to American U-2 pilots. Saxitoxin is derived from marine plankton and is a thousand times more potent than the nerve gas Sarin. It can stifle breathing and cause death in 10 seconds.

In 1970, President Nixon ordered the CIA to destroy its entire stock of Saxitoxin, painstakingly collected over several years, as part of the U.S. commitment in accordance with the United Nations agreement on biological weapons.

UC Santa Barbara Library
The Libraries at the University of California, Santa Barbara are made up of the Donald C. Davidson Library and the Arts Library. The Davidson Library is named in honour of Donald C. Davidson, University Librarian from 1947 to 1977. The Libraries at UCSB have a collection of approximately 2.6 million volumes, and online users can access catalogues, databases of articles and books, complete electronic journals, and other scholarly sources. The UCSB Libraries are open to the public and serve a campus of 18,800 students.