p According to the Centers for Disease Control , there have been over 1100 reported cases of West Nile virus disease in the US this year, including 42 deaths. If these numbers seem high, they are #8211; in fact, it#8217;s the highest number of reported cases since West Nile was first detected in the US in 1999, and West Nile season has just begun. Given that the peak of West Nile epidemics generally occurs in mid August, and it takes a few weeks for people to fall ill, the CDC expects that number to rise dramatically. But why now? /ppThough the CDC doesn#8217;t have an official response to that question, the director of the CDC#8217;s Vector-Borne Infectious Disease Division said that #8216;unusually warm weather#8217; may be to blame. So far, 2012 is the hottest year on record in the United States according to the National Climatic Data Center , with record-breaking temperatures and drought a national norm. It#8217;s likely no coincidence that some of the states hit hardest by West Nile are also feeling the brunt of the heat. More than half of cases have been reported from Texas alone, where the scorching heat has left only 12% of the state drought-free . Fifteen heat records were broken in Texas just last week on August 13th. /p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=is-climate-change-to-blame-for-this-years-west-nile-outbreak[More]/a
p class=wp-caption-text(Image by David R. Ingham, via Wikimedia Commons)/p pThe computer, smartphone or other electronic device on which you are reading this article has a rudimentary brain kind of.* It has highly organized electrical circuits that store information and behave in specific, predictable ways, just like the interconnected cells in your brain. On the most fundamental level, electrical circuits and neurons are made of the same stuff atoms and their constituent elementary particles but whereas the human brain is conscious, manmade gadgets do not know they exist. Consciousness, most scientists argue, is not a universal property of all matter in the universe. Rather, consciousness is restricted to a subset of animals with relatively complex brains. The more scientists study animal behavior and brain anatomy, however, the more universal consciousness seems to be. A brain as complex as the human brain is definitely not necessary for consciousness. On July 7 this year, a group of neuroscientists convening at Cambridge University signed a document officially declaring that non-human animals, #8220;including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses#8221; are conscious./p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=does-self-awareness-require-a-complex-brain[More]/a
p Here#8217;s some good news about climate change: emissions of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide have slowed and, in some cases, begun to decline. That means fewer molecules drifting in the atmosphere and blocking the escape of heat radiated by an Earth warmed by sunlight . The bad news is no one knows why./ppNow a new study suggests that declines in ethane a simple hydrocarbon molecule and component of the fossil fuel known as natural gas can be attributed to companies stopping the practice of simply releasing the gas that comes up with every barrel of oil. Atmospheric measurements stretching from 1984 to 2010 suggest that ethane emission rates have fallen by a full 21 percent. The study is published in Nature on August 23 . ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group)./p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=oil-companies-may-have-been-helping-combat-climate-change-a-little[More]/a
pFrom Nature magazine/p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=sea-lions-feasting-threatened-salmon[More]/a
pFrom Nature magazine/p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=older-fathers-pass-on-mor[More]/a
pEarly experiences not only shape adult lives, but they might also protect against future cognitive problems resulting from brain damage, according to neurobiologists studying the mental abilities of rats with brain lesions. Typically, these lesions impair a rat#39;s ability to focus and filter out distractions. But scientists now have evidence that an early behavioral intervention could prevent this effect./p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=head-start-early-learning-cognitive[More]/a
pEarly experiences not only shape adult lives, but they might also protect against future cognitive problems resulting from brain damage, according to neurobiologists studying the mental abilities of rats with brain lesions. Typically, these lesions impair a rat#39;s ability to focus and filter out distractions. But scientists now have evidence that an early behavioral intervention could prevent this effect./p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=head-start-early-learning-cognitive[More]/a
p class=wp-caption-textKlebsiella pneumoniae causes severe, hospital-acquired infection. Genome sequencing helped researchers recreate the path of pathogenesis. Photo from CDC. /p pWas it Colonel Mustard in the library with a lead pipe? Or Mrs. Peacock in the ballroom with a candlestick? No, it was deadly, drug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae from a 43-year-old woman spreading to 17 other patients, killing 6 of them and sickening 5 others, at the National Institutes of Health s (NIH) Clinical Center in June 2011./p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=like-a-game-of-clue-genomics-tracks-outbreak-revealing-evolution-in-action[More]/a
pBy Alister Doyle/ppOSLO (Reuters) - Temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula started rising naturally 600 years ago, long before man-made climate changes further increased them, scientists said in a study on Wednesday that helps explain the recent collapses of vast ice shelves./ppThe study, reconstructing ancient temperatures to understand a region that is warming faster than anywhere else in the southern hemisphere, said a current warming rate of 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 Fahrenheit) per century was unusual but not unprecedented./ppBy the time the unusual recent warming began, the Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves were already poised for the dramatic break-ups observed from the 1990s onwards, said the British Antarctic Survey, which led the study published in the journal Nature./ppA warming trend caused by natural variations, perhaps affecting winds and ocean currents, began 600 years ago and made ice shelves - tracts of ice floating on the ocean around the peninsula - vulnerable to even faster warming since 1920./ppSeveral ice shelves around the peninsula have collapsed in recent years, including the Larsen A and B shelves and the Wilkins. a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=antarctic-peninsula-started-warming-600-years-ago[More]/a
p class=wp-caption-textLord Howe Island stick insect at Melbourne Zoo. Credit: Rohan Cleave, courtesy of the Eureka Awards/p pThis wonderful photograph, which was one of the ten highly commended entrants in the 2012 New Scientist Eureka Prize for Science Photography , captures an extremely special event. That chartreuse green insect is unfurling from its little egg to add to a slowly swelling captive population of Lord Howe Island stick insects #8211; one of the rarest, and largest, insects in the world #8211; at Melbourne Zoo. It will grow up to be a flightless, nocturnal insect that stretches up to 12 cm long, its solid, shiny black or rust-coloured body weighing up to 25 grams. Sir David Attenborough loves them ./p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=lord-howe-island-stick-insects-are-going-home[More]/a
pBy Beatrice Gachenge/ppNAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya has asked farmers to burn tracts of maize fields and plant alternative crops to mitigate the spread of a deadly maize virus that has the potential to wipe out 80 percent of the crop, a senior official in the Ministry of Agriculture said on Wednesday./ppThe disease - maize lethal necrosis - has caused fears of soaring food prices in east Africas biggest economy, which faces a deficit of the staple every year and bridges the gap through imports from Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi./ppWilson Songa, the ministrys agriculture secretary said the virus - which makes the plant to turn yellow and dry up - had mostly affected the south rift, a part of the countrys main bread basket and the eastern region./ppThe total (affected) acreage of the last survey we did (July) is 64,115 hectares. a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=kenya-steps-up-measures-to-contain-deadly-maize-disease[More]/a
pCHINCOTEAGUE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Va. ndash; A sign at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service visitor center here states a simple motto: quot; Where Wildlife Comes First. quot; But many visitors never see the sign, or much wildlife. Cars stream past the center on hot summer days, headed for a mile-long public beach at the refuge#39;s southern end. The prime goals are sand, surf, and a parking spot close to the water./p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=in-virginia-encroaching-seas-pit-parking-against-preservation[More]/a
pTwenty-eight years ago James R. Flynn, a researcher at the University of Otago in New Zealand, discovered a phenomenon that social scientists still struggle to explain: IQ scores have been increasing steadily since the beginning of the 20th century. Flynn went on to examine intelligence-test data from more than two dozen countries and found that scores were rising by 0.3 point a year--three full points per decade. Nearly 30 years of follow-up studies have confirmed the statistical reality of the global uptick, now known as the Flynn effect. And scores are still climbing./p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=will-we-keep-getting-smarter-flynn-effect-says-yes[More]/a
a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=test-article-angela[More]/a
