Tracking Latent Domain Knowledge - Mapping Scientific Frontiers: The Quest for Knowledge Visualization - page 244

Fig. 7.12 This branch represents a new paradigm of incorporating Pathfinder networks into
Generalized Similarity Analysis ( GSA ), a generic framework for structuring and visualization, and
its applications especially in strengthening traditional citation analysis

7.5 BSE and vCJD

Stanley Prusiner, professor of neurology, virology, and biochemistry at the
University of California San Francisco, published an article in Science (Prusiner
1982 ), in which he first introduced the concept of prions - infectious proteins.
Stanley Prusiner, a 1997 Nobel Prize winner for his discovery of prions - a type of
bad protein, suggested that an abnormal form of a protein is responsible for diseases
such as scrapie in sheep, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle -mad
cow disease, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans. These diseases are
known as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE).

7.5.1 Mainstream Domain Knowledge

BSE was first found in 1986 in England. A sponge-like malformation was found
in the brain tissue from affected cattle. It was identified as a new prion disease,
a new TSE disease. The BSE epidemic in Britain reached its peak in 1992 and
has since steadily declined. CJD was first discovered in the 1920s by two German