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More than 1,000 people have died in the Andhra Pradesh area of India in a 3 week heat wave. Hundreds more have been hospitalized. The town of Kottagudem recorded a temperature of over 126 Fahrenheit for almost a week. “Life has become a hell,” says one villager. “There is no work for farm hands like me. Even if I dare to come out to look for work, there is no guarantee I will return home alive.” The heat has caused the state?s worst drought for 40 years. Local official Penta Narsimha says, “There is no water even at a depth of 300 to 400 feet. We dug 24 bore-wells but could find water in only four of them.” Water is being trucked in from as far 30 miles away. “Only the rich can afford this,” says one resident. “There is no way out for poor like us.”
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Scientists have studied geckos, the lizards that like to walk on the ceiling, and have created a sticky tape that will allow humans to do the same thing. Each gecko toe is covered by billions of tiny hair-like structures which set up tiny electrical charges, allowing the animal to cling to a wall or ceiling. So far, scientists have only been able to create a tiny piece of the tape. Andre Geim says, “We demonstrated this actually with a small toy of spiderman which we found in the nearest shop. We covered his hand with the gecko tape and he can stick to horizontal glass plate from underneath.”
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Meteorologists are trying come up with ways to calm down hurricanes. One method would be to blast them with a nuclear weapon. “The answer to that is a hurricane is bad enough without making it radioactive,” says Hugh Willoughby, of the International Hurricane Center. “The only benefit would be is it would glow in the dark and it would be a lot easier to see at night.” But Peter Cordani of Dyn-O-Mat, who invented an absorbent powder that can make a thundercloud release rain, thinks he can solve the hurricane problem too.
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We’ve learned that dolphin DNA is closer to humans than cows, horses or pigs, despite the fact that they live in the water. Now it’s been discovered that record numbers of these friendly relatives, along with sea lions, are being killed by a deadly toxin from sea algae that grows in the waters along California’s southern coast.

The poison is domoic acid, a nerve toxin made by a species of microscopic algae. Scientists think there’s so much more of this algae around because it’s feeding on nutrients from agricultural runoff or sewage. Changing weather patterns, causing warmer ocean waters, could also cause the algae to thrive.
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