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Few residents of Pennsylvania and New Jersey have read — or can understand ? the new water restrictions and few authorities are enforcing them. So in communities across the region, sprinkler spies are ratting out their neighbors.

Officials in 14 area communities, including Philadelphia, say they have not issued any tickets for violating water restrictions. Some say they?ve issued verbal warnings. Some say it?s too early for much lawn watering. Others say that although they welcome information from neighbors, the tips don?t always pan out. “You have to be careful, because people sometimes have vendettas against each other,” says Maryann Paradise, public-education officer for the Mount Laurel Municipal Utilities Authority.
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Preliminary results from a study of thousands of farmers in Iowa and North Carolina suggest that exposure to several crop pesticides may be linked to the development of Parkinson’s disease.

Doctors have observed that the neurodegenerative disease is more common in people who live in farming communities, leading them to speculate that exposure to pesticides increases a person?s risk of developing the disease.

“The idea of some link to environmental toxins is becoming pretty well-accepted, but the exact ones and how much you have to be exposed to be at risk of Parkinson’s disease isn’t clear,” says Dr. Robin Brey, of the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio.
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Until now, antibiotics have easily killed group A streptococcus, the bacteria that cause strep throat and life-threatening septic infections, but now hospitals have seen a sudden, widespread resistance of the bacteria to widely used antibiotic erythromycin. Strep is becoming a superbug.

Doctors suspect the strep bacteria also are becoming resistant to other popular drugs in the same antibiotic family. The use of these antibiotics is growing because they require only one dose a day, compared with three for many other antibiotics. People who are allergic to penicillin rely on them.
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While Congress was debating whether or not to drill for oil in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge, NASA scientists have discovered that the Earth?s crust contains enough hydrogen to end the world?s energy problems.

Professor Friedemann Freund, of the Ames Research Center in California, says the hydrogen is produced when water molecules break down inside molten rock. His team has evidence that there may be over 85 gallons of hydrogen trapped in each cubic foot of some rocks. The daily energy needs of England could be supplied by the hydrogen trapped in just a cubic mile of rock. However, extracting the hydrogen would be extremely difficult.
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