Scientists have discovered a new strain of bird flu that appears to sidestep current vaccines.
It’s infecting people as well as poultry in Asia, and some researchers fear its evolution may have been steered by the vaccination programs designed to protect poultry from earlier types of the H5N1 flu.
The discovery by Yi Guan of the University of Hong Kong and colleagues is reported in Tuesday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read More »
After years of debate, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin gave the go-ahead on Tuesday for what could be one of the most dramatic missions of the space shuttle program: a final repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.
"We are going to add a shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to the shuttle's manifest before it retires," Griffin told agency employees here at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The news was greeted with a loud round of applause. Read More »
Walking around downtown Orlando, Fla., feels like strolling through "The Truman Show" 's fictional town of Seahaven. But spotless sidewalks, a tidy business district, lush parks and lakes belie a real city with real problems, in particular a burgeoning homeless population that local officials are struggling to control. After a law banning begging outright was struck down by the courts, the city tried regulating panhandlers by issuing them ID cards, then by confining them to three- by 15-foot "panhandling zones" painted on sidewalks. But it wasn't enough, so this summer Orlando tried a supply-side solution, cracking down on churches and activists who had been feeding large groups of homeless people in downtown parks. Now it's not just the panhandlers who risk getting arrested, it's the people trying to help them. Read More »
Amid growing public pressure, the fast-food eatery announces that it's switching to a no-trans-fat frying oil.
Colonel Sanders is putting America on a diet.
KFC, a unit of Yum! Brands (YUM, news, msgs), announced today that it will switch to a cooking oil with no trans fat in all its U.S. fried-chicken restaurants by April 2007. Read More »
Just days after the St. Louis Cardinals won the top honor in Major League Baseball, their hometown jumped to first place on a list no one wants to lead: the most dangerous cities in the United States.
This Midwestern city has long been in the upper tiers of the annual ranking of the nation’s safest and most dangerous cities, compiled by Morgan Quitno Press. Violent crime surged nearly 20 percent there this year, when the rate of such crimes rose much faster in the Midwest than in the rest of nation, according to FBI figures released in June. Read More »
A scientist has found a 100 million-year-old bee trapped in amber, making it possibly the oldest bee ever found.
"I knew right away what it was, because I had seen bees in younger amber before," said George Poinar, a zoology professor at Oregon State University.
The bee is about 40 million years older than previously found bees. The discovery of the ancient bee may help explain the rapid expansion and diversity of flowering plants during that time. Read More »
The 42-year-old is training for the Antarctic 100K on Dec. 15, so he needs a place that's really, really c-c-cold to prepare for the ultra marathon, which will cover 62.1 miles on the f-f-frozen continent on the bottom of the planet.
Two or three times a week, he heads down the freeway from his suburban home to a cold-storage warehouse and heads for freezer box No. 9.
There, in a 60-by-40-foot space, among pallets of frozen food piled to the ceiling, with fans blowing in frosty air and the thermometer hovering around minus-5, he can simulate all the discomforts of Antarctica, minus the ice and rock. Read More »
A pair of British twin boys has been born with different skin color, a rare genetic occurrence according to experts.
In an interview with Britain's Sky News program, mother Kerry Richardson said that the boys were both born white but as they've gotten older one of the boys got darker and the other lighter.
Today, she says, the twins attract attention wherever they go. Read More »
