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Seven days; lots of science in the news. Here’s our roundup of this week’s most notable and quotable items:
The 2-year-old “patient zero” of the Ebola outbreak may have contracted the disease after playing near a hollow tree filled with bats. Radioactive byproducts from the 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan are expected to reach their peak off the west coast of North America by the end of 2015—though researchers expect the radioactivity will still fall within acceptable safety limits. Drunk finches slur their songs.
Estrogen worsens allergic reactions. Venus may have once had oceans of fluid carbon dioxide. Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy)—Comet Lovejoy to its friends—is passing by Earth and should be viewable with the naked eye in coming weeks. Monarch butterflies may soon be placed on the endangered species list. Maybe the obesity epidemic is hitting us because we all spend too much time luxuriating in artificial warmth.
Fast food has gotten a little better for you in the past 18 years, except where it’s gotten a lot worse. Minerals found in an underwater cave in Belize known as the Blue Hole show that an extreme drought coincided with the collapse of the Mayan civilization. Influenza has killed 15 children in the U.S. this year so far; this year’s flu strain seems to be especially nasty in younger patients. NASA is going to attempt to hack the brain of the Opportunity rover on Mars due to some signs of robot dementia.
Illustration by Sarah Peavey
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