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With global warming, tropical mosquito-borne diseases are hitting the U.S. In Florida, the health department says there’s a “very high” chance that mosquitoes with malaria are flying around, after one man was found to be infected with the disease.

In the Palm Beach Post, Rochelle Brenner quotes Tim O’Connor, of the Palm Beach County Health Department, as saying, “He was outdoors and very active and bitten by mosquitoes [and] during that time he was highly infectious.” The man would have about two weeks to infect another person and that person would start to see symptoms in about two weeks. Symptoms include headaches, vomiting, chills, and high fever or sweating.
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You may be able to blame some of your unhealthy habits on our genes. Everyone has one of two genes that cause them to either taste, or not taste, a certain bitter substance. The ability to taste these substances developed long ago, to protect people living in places where bitter tastes were a way to identify poisons. Today, the ability to taste?or not taste?that compound influences what people eat and even whether they become smokers.
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A superbug is bacteria that evolves inside hospitals to beresistant to the latest antibiotics. The danger is not onlyto the patient who has it, but to the other patients in thehospital as well. And if it gets into the outside world, itcould sweep through the population until?and if?a newantibiotic can be created that can destroy it. A newsuperbug has been discovered among wounded soldiers in Iraq.

William Cole writes in the Honolulu Advertiser about ClaudeBoushey, a soldier who had surgery in Germany after ahelicopter crash to insert a titanium rod into his left leg.He found out he tested positive for the superbugAcinetobacter baumanii. Boushey says, “I was kind of alarmed. I was like, what is it? It took me aweek just to pronounce it.”
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Global warming will eventually change the areas whereagriculture thrives, as well as the kinds of crops that aregrown. In big countries, the change will happen gradually,once farmers and the government accept the idea that weatherchanges are here to stay. But a small country like Cuba hashad to make drastic changes already.

In Cuba, tropical storms have been alternating with droughtand this has caused farmers to switch to heartier crops.They’re growing varieties of plants that have resistance todrought and they also need crops that can resist the highwinds of tropical storms, since recent storms have destroyedstanding crops.
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