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One of the strangest plants on the planet Earth is called “slime mold,” a single-celled plant which normally lives on the moist forest floor that when under stress, builds a kind of “space ship” which it then launches away from the danger. We human beings may eventually have to do the same thing.

Usually the cells of Dictyostelium discoideum live separately. But when their food dries up, they band together and form a multi-cellular tower designed to save their children. Researcher Joe Noel wanted to figure out how they do it.
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In an earlier story, we reported that your cat may be passing on parasites to you?parasites that affect the way your brain works. Now this story has been confirmed by a new story suggesting that a “clever cat parasite may alter human cultures on a massive scale.”

ABC-TV News in Chicago reports that parasite ecologist Kevin Lafferty has published a research paper proving that the parasite Toxoplasma gondii has been transmitted indirectly from cats to half the people on earth, and it affects human personalities. He says that Toxoplasma is “frighteningly amazing.”
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We store dangerous nuclear waste in secret places deep underneath the desert. Can we store dangerous greenhouse gases on the ocean floor?

BBC news reports that scientists are desperately searching for ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions. One of their ideas is to pump the offending CO2 deep under the ocean, kind of the opposite of drilling for oil and natural gas. In fact, the CO2 could be stored in empty oil and gas fields, as well as in empty coal mines on land.
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As someone who has recently faced death, I’ve learned that fear is triggered by the unknown. I’ve been thinking lately about fear and about what it really is, and why we feel it. So often what we fear turns out later to be insignificant. In the creative world I live in, fear is constantly with you: panic when you think that people won’t like your script, fear that the movie will never get made, worry that people won’t come to see it if it does, fear that readers won’t pick up your new book.
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