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Some researchers think that sign language actually leads to deafness. And due to the new science of cochlear implants, which are now implanted in young children, sign language may be on the way out among the deaf. But some deaf people insist that sign language is what defines them as a unique culture.

In New Scientist magazine, Rachel Nowak quotes researcher Harlan Lane as saying, “Deaf people argue that they use a different language, and with it comes a different culture, but there is certainly nothing wrong with them that needs fixing with a surgeon’s scalpel. We should listen.”
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SARS and bird flu aren’t the only diseases that humans can catch from animals. Between 2,000 and 2,005, around 50 million people caught diseases from animals such as dogs, cattle, chickens and mosquitoes, and almost 80,000 of them died. Sometimes animals pass diseases between species. And it works both ways: some HUMAN diseases are killing animals.

Jeanna Bryner writes in LiveScience.com that diseases that humans catch from animals are called zoonotic illnesses. Netherlands researcher Jonathan Heeney says that zoonotic illnesses seem to be increasing, and there are no vaccines for most of them. Heeney thinks that doctors and veterinarians need to work together to solve this problem.
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Due to global warming, massive fires covering half a million acres are burning in the eastern part of the Australian state of Victoria. In a desperate attempt to prevent them from combining into a superfire that would rank as one of the largest conflagrations in modern history, the Australian army has been mobilized to support firefighters.
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We have recruited animals, from llamas to dolphins, in our fight against terrorism. The latest strategy is to train honey bees to sniff out bombs. But if we’re going to draft bees for military action, we’d better make sure they don’t disappear.

Los Alamos scientists think they can figure out how to harness the incredible olfactory sense of honey bees, which they use in their search for nectar, to sniff out the explosives used in the kinds of explosives that are used in roadside bombs in Iraq. Researcher Tim Haarmann says, “Scientists have long marveled at the honey bee’s phenomenal sense of smell, which rivals that of dogs.”

Art credit: freeimages.co.uk
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