Monthly Archives: November 2009

Turtles and Salmonella

November 20, 2009 | Editor | Leave a comment

Turtles can be great, low-maintenance pets, but there’s an added risk: Salmonella.  Salmonella is a type of bacteria.  You can’t see it without a microscope, but it can make people very sick.

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Pooportunity knocks

November 20, 2009 | Editor | Leave a comment

In Greeley, Colorado, what used to be an annoying odor may become the sweet smell of success.  A new plan for a “clean energy park” includes using new technology that converts methane gas from cow poop into power to run the town’s businesses.  Not only will they be cutting down on waste and providing alternate energy sources, but they’ll be decreasing greenhouse gases as well.

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Connecting the dots

November 11, 2009 | Editor | Leave a comment

It was a veterinary pathologist who first figured out that the deaths of crows in New York and the illnesses in people were related and were due to infection with the West Nile Virus.

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Of bats and bridges

November 11, 2009 | Editor | Leave a comment

Just when we think we’ve got things figured out, we learn that we have much more to learn.  Scientists recently learned that some species of bats might actually do better living under concrete bridges than in bat caves. The University of Boston team found that bats living under bridges were larger and grew faster than bats in a cave.  Although it’s not perfectly clear why these bats were doing so well, it might be because the area under the bridges is warmer and closer to good feeding grounds.

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What if we could make the three blind mice see again?

November 11, 2009 | Editor | Leave a comment

Maybe the nursery rhyme wouldn’t be accurate anymore, but we bet the mice would be happier.  The retina is the membrane in the back of the eye that serves the extremely important functions of processing the light that comes into the eye and then sending the signal through the optic nerve to your brain so you see that beautiful sunset or that smiling, happy face or that wagging tail.

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