Home  »  Headline News

On:

Most dogs love chocolate, even though veterinarians say it isn’t good for them, but cats turn up their noses at sweets (as well as that expensive new cat food you bought). Scientists say cats don’t have a sweet tooth because they don’t have the genetic ability to taste sweets. Wild cats, such as lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars, have a similar inability to taste sweets. But as most of us know, the cats we adopt as pets get fat anyway.

“One possible explanation for this behavior is that felines are unable to detect sweet-tasting compounds like sugars and high intensity sweeteners because their sweet taste receptor is defective,” says geneticist Xia Li. “An obvious place to look?is at the genes coding for the sweet-taste receptor.”
read more

On:

Current estimates indicate that the global sea level is rising due to global warming and glacier shrinkage. Recent scientific studies have shown that a variety of terrestrial ice sources, such as the Greenland ice sheet, the West Antarctic ice sheet and Alaskan mountain glaciers, are contributing significant amounts to the global sea-level rise. However, in a study released in Science magazine, a researcher has found that the interior of the East Antarctic ice sheet is actually gaining mass. This is good news for coastal cities and island nations that might drown otherwise.
read more

On:

Chinese authorities report that a mystery disease has killed17 people from villages around Ziyang and Neijiang. Atpresent, 12 more people are in critical condition and 27 arestable. 2 have recovered.

It appears that all of the farmers had butchered sick pigsor sheep before coming down with the illness.

The World Health Organization said that there is at presentno sign of a massive outbreak of the disease, and thatChinese authorities are saying that it is not beingtransmitted from human to human.

The symptoms are fatigue, fever, nausea, vomiting, coma anddeath. The victims have all been farmers, and did not appearto have had contact with each other.
read more

On:

Twenty-one people died in Arizona from the heat, and itreached 117 F in Las Vegas, tying a record set in 1942. Nowthe brutal heat has moved east, and triple digittemperatures are expected across the midwest, with heatadvisories in most states east of the Mississippi.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, Siberian forests areburning due to record drought and heat, and a dust cloudfrom the Sahara desert the size of the US is moving acrossFlorida, South Texas and Mexico.

European temperatures have moderated after records were setearlier in the week across much of the area. Fortunately,the heat this summer has not been so intense or prolongedthat it has resulted in any known European deaths.
read more