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Doctors in Detroit recently amputated the toes of a 40-year-old woman who was not responding to antibiotics and discovered she was infected with a virulent new strain of staph bacteria. The new bacteria became totally resistant to all antibiotics by stealing genetic material from another bacteria. Dr. Fred Tenover of the CDC says, “This is an organism that could cause very serious disease if it was in the community.” Experts think that eventually so many bacteria will develop resistance that antibiotics won’t work any more, and hospitals will be filled with people dying from what used to be curable infections.
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A new audio message said to be from Osama bin-Laden was broadcast on the Arab satellite TV network Al Jazeera earlier this week. Many messages from bin-Laden have been broadcast before, but earlier messages haven?t referred to recent events, giving the impression they were recorded before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and released in order to make us believe that bin-Laden is still alive (meaning he?s probably dead). But this message is different: it refers to recent events, such as the attack on the French tanker in Yemen on October 6, the terrorist attacks in Bali on October 12, and the Moscow theater siege on October 23. Is this really Osama?s voice?
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On Halloween, solar flares erupted almost simultaneously on opposite sides of the sun?a phenomenon that?s never been seen before. Simultaneous solar flares have been seen in the past, but they’re usually clustered together, and scientists want to know if the flares are linked or if this is just a coincidence. “Now we have only one example of two flares that go off simultaneously that far apart, so it could be an accident. If we see more of these?then it becomes extremely important,” says astronomer Stephen Greggor. These flares can make space travel hazardous.
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Smoking marijuana is as bad for your lungs as smoking tobacco, according to a report from the British Lung Foundation. Marijuana has the same chemicals that are harmful to respiratory tissue as tobacco?except for nicotine?and three marijuana joints a day are as dangerous as 20 cigarettes, mainly because of the way they’re smoked.
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