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Russian researcher Alexander Sulakvelidze came to the U.S. after Communism ended because “There was nothing left to do. Good scientists would come to work and spend all day playing cards and chess.” When he arrived at the University of Maryland Medical Center, he discovered the hospital was in the midst of a crisis that Soviet scientists had already solved.

Richard Martin writes in Wired that the Enterococcus bacteria was showing signs of resistance to vancomycin, the antibiotic of last resort. Between 1992 and 1994, vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) infected 75 patients, killing 6 of them. 20% of the patients had VRE in their bloodstreams. The cause of the epidemic was an overuse of antibiotics.
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Meteorologists think Hurricane Isabel may be just the first of a long string of even bigger hurricanes that may keep coming for at least a decade. “We’re not talking about a minor little increase,” says Stanley Goldenberg of NOAA, “but an overall doubling of major hurricane activity.”

J. Madeleine Nash writes in Time Magazine online that starting in 1995, the corridor of warm water that lies between the Cape Verde Islands and Central America has been producing about four big storms a year, as compared with two or less in the preceding three decades. Meteorologist William Gray says, “the Atlantic is a marginal area for tropical storms. When global conditions are not right, it sees very few, and when they are, it sees quite a lot.”
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The largest ice shelf in the Arctic has broken up, Canada and the U.S. announced on Monday. The Ward Hunt Ice shelf has been a feature of the polar cap for at least 3,000 years. It has broken up as a result of the exceptionally hot summer of 2003, and will now turn into a large number of icebergs, which will drift south and melt over the next two or three years. The last time this happened, it was the beginning of an ice age that lasted for 2,000 years.read more

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Some of our most popular Dreamland guests write books that take a completely new look at the past, and now some of your favorites are on sale. Read on to find out what we’ve learned about history this year on Dreamland.

Was there really an Atlantis, and if so, what happened to it?

Do we really understand what the ancient Egyptians were all about? Did their mystics know the secret of the afterlife?

Speaking of the Egyptians, what secrets were found in the mysterious tomb of Tutankhamun and why are they so close to those found in Mayan tombs?

And speaking of the Maya, who was the mysterious God who spread wisdom throughout the Americas?
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