Each year more than 40 million Americans become sick with foodborne infections. Among those who become ill, 128,000 will be hospitalized and 3,000 will die. Foodborne illness also takes a toll on our economy: Broad estimates are that the US loses $77 billion in lost productivity due to people who become sick - adding in more estimates of economic impact a foodborne illness outbreak has on the affected industry.

Usually, a great deal of effort has gone into preventing foodborne illness outbreaks. In 2010, the Obama administration got the Food Safety Management Act passed but it hasn't been funded or implemented, though they have scuttled other food testing divisions of the government that have been focused on preventing contamination of food supply.

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The gravitational field surrounding the massive cluster of galaxies called Abell 68 acts as a natural lens in space to brighten and magnify the light coming from very distant background galaxies.

Like a fun house mirror, lensing creates a fantasy landscape of arc-like images and mirror images of background galaxies. The foreground cluster is 2 billion light-years away, and the lensed images come from galaxies far behind it.

In this photo, the image of a spiral galaxy at upper left has been stretched and mirrored into a shape similar to that of a simulated alien from the classic 1970s computer game "Space Invaders!" A second, less distorted image of the same galaxy appears to the left of the large, bright elliptical galaxy.

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The first evidence for an extinct giant camel in Canada's High Arctic has been revealed. The discovery is based on 30 fossil fragments of a leg bone found on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut and represents the most northerly record for early camels, whose ancestors are known to have originated in North America some 45 million years ago. 

The fossils were collected over three summer field seasons (2006, 2008 and 2010) and are about three-and-a-half million years old, dating from the mid-Pliocene Epoch. Other fossil finds at the site suggest this High Arctic camel lived in a boreal-type forest environment, during a global warm phase on the planet.

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How did the now extinct Falkland Islands wolf come to be the only land-based mammal there, when they islands are almost 300 miles from Argentina?.

Previous hypotheses floated the idea that the wolf somehow rafted on ice or vegetation, crossed via a now-submerged land bridge or was even semi-domesticated and transported by early South American humans.

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Human embryonic stem cells still get all of the attention - a company in California might be able to do a clinical trial for an applied hESC treatment and it was in the news everywhere, but researchers at the University of Minnesota's Lillehei Heart Institute have shown why the un-controversial induced pluripotent stem cell technology may deserve it more. Researchers  have combined genetic repair with cellular reprogramming to generate stem cells capable of muscle regeneration in a mouse model for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). 

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The nucleic and amino acids caught up in the infamous "selfish" segregation distorter (SD) saga may be just inanimate chemical compounds to most of us, but they have put on a soap opera for biologists since the phenomenon was discovered in fruit flies 50 years ago. 

When male flies make their sperm, the SD gene (call it "A") manages to rig meiosis — the specialized cell division that makes sex cells — so that maturing sperm that bear chromosomes with the susceptible allele (call that one "a") end up defective and discarded. They never even leave the testes. It is murder, of a sort. Similar selfish systems occur in mammals, including humans.

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Remarkably well-preserved fossils of two crocodilians and a mammal previously unknown to science during recent Panama Canal excavations have led to discovering of new species.

The two new ancient, extinct alligator-like animals and an extinct hippo-like species inhabited Central America during the Miocene about 20 million years ago.  The fossils shed new light on scientists' understanding of species distribution because they represent a time before the formation of the Isthmus of Panama, when the continents of North and South America were separated by oceanic waters.

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Due to the insights gained from a decade's worth of viral research, it's not surprising that in the autumn of 2013, Penn State University will offer a newly developed course in viral ecology. For a century, the word virus had been exclusively associated with certain human, animal, plant or computer diseases. Virus, which is rooted in the Latin word for a slimy, poisonous liquid, had nothing but negative connotations. Yet virologists have slowly come to realize that only a minority of viruses are virulent. Most are innocuous, some are definitely beneficial, and others are indispensable to their hosts. -->

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It's among the most ancient of questions in history, covering metaphysics, chemistry, biology and theology: What are the origins of life on Earth?

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Dr. Timothy Elbert Wise  is not only a joint-program leader of both the Popular Music and Recording and Popular Musicology degrees at the University of Salford, UK, but is also one of the world’s foremost authorities on the history and physiology of yodeling. 

He has published a number of scholarly papers on the subject, (full publications list here). Take for example Yodel Species: A Typology of Falsetto Effects in Popular Music Vocal Styles (published in the journal Radial Musicology, Volume 2, 2007)
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New surveys find that older adults who play video games report higher levels of emotional well-being.

Scholars asked 140 people aged 63 and older how often they played video games, if at all. The participants then took a series of psychological assessment tests to determine their emotional and social well-being. 61 percent of study participants played video games at least occasionally, with 35 percent of participants saying they played at least once per week.

The survey found that participants who played video games, including those who only played occasionally, reported higher levels of well-being. Those who did not play video games reported that they felt more negative emotions and had a tendency toward feeling higher levels of depression.

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The timber industry, including pulp and paper producers, are among Canada's most important industries  - but they are also one of the largest producers of wastewater and greenhouse gas emissions in wastewater is a concern. 

Until now, greenhouse gas emission estimates have been limited by the mathematical models used to predict them. Researchers have recently developed a new dynamic method to better predict the emission content of these gases.   

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Understanding and explaining how the Universe works has always been a ultimate goal for mankind. It is impossible to live our conscious existence without asking ourselves whether there is a meaning, a design, or if our existence is just the result of chance; and to avoid asking ourselves what happens after we die, if we will live again, and similar questions. Accepting our mortality is really hard without embracing a potential explanation, a hope, or some kind of faith.
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A new paper says that flocks of birds, schools of fish, and groups of any other living organisms might have a mathematical function in common - body sizes are distributed according to the same mathematical expression, where the only unknown is the average size of the species in an ecosystem. 

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Doctors have used drugs to induce general anesthesia in patients undergoing surgery since a medical doctor became a legitimate profession in the mid-1800s.  But little has been known about how these drugs create such a profound loss of consciousness. We don't understand why aspirin works either, but it does.  Yet the search for answers about the brain is ongoing. 

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When a marathon runner approaches the finish line of race but suddenly collapses, it's reasonable to assume it is because of a muscle issue. It might also be a braking mechanism in the brain which swings into effect and makes us people tired to continue. What may be occurring is what is referred to as 'central fatigue'.

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A survey analysis finds both that the public is supportive of government action to curb obesity, diabetes, and other noncommunicable diseases - but don't like interventions that appear intrusive or coercive.

The Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) analysis also found that support was higher for interventions that help people make more healthful choices, such as menu labeling requirements, than for interventions that penalize certain choices or health conditions, such as charging higher insurance premiums for obese individuals.

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If your children stump you with 'cite your data' claims on why they need to eat leafy green vegetables, even though we got to the top of the food chain so we wouldn't have to do that, here is good news; a new study found that that an immune cell population essential for intestinal health could be controlled by leafy greens in your diet.

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Last week a new important paper appeared in the Arxiv: "MSSM Higgs Boson Searches at the LHC:Benchmark Scenarios after the Discovery of a Higgs-like Particle", by M.Carena, S.Heinemeyer, O. Stal, C.Wagner, and G.Weiglein. The paper fills a void that was created after the discovery of the Higgs particle last July by the ATLAS and CMS experiments: a thorough assessment of what constraints on the allowed chunks of SUSY parameter space in the light of the existence of a neutral scalar at 125 GeV.
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Richard Mankiewicz, our man in Bangkok, also known as Red Man (see his profile – no no, not because of Bangkok’s red light district - that would be Stickman, not Red Man!) has started a Math Puzzle Column on Science2.0, first entry: Circles Stuck in a Triangle.

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