Mercury-resistant bacteria could help scientists to understand more about mercury cycling in the environment. In a new study, researchers identified one particular strain of soil bacterium that could serve as a model for the conversion of the toxic metal into less toxic forms. They also discovered a new gene involved in the conversion process.

Find out what wood ducks are revealing about threats to our fine feathered friends.

The 2010 BP oil spill left a lasting legacy that the National Wildlife Federation says is still killing animals in record numbers.

Death by acid was the fate of the sea monsters that perished in Earth's biggest mass extinction, some 251 million years ago.

Thanks to massive water-diversion and salt-evaporation projects, satellite images show how the Dead Sea is gradually living up to its name.

A study finds that many people are dying due to a complication of Type 1 diabetes without knowing they had the disease.

On the way to a palliative care facility, cancer patient Ron McCartney had one request: a caramel sundae.

The extremely rare South Pacific island is one of three new islands to form in the last 150 years.

The man-made foothills are most definitely alive in Cupertino.

Some people are letting go of items that don't spark joy. Others are hoping to benefit from that.

Eddie Spaghetti, a dying rescue dog, gets to suit up and be a police K-9 for a day.

In some regions, as many as 80 percent of trees could be in danger from RAD or rapid apple decline.

Researchers counted nearly 600,000 dead hermit crabs on one island chain alone.

Local in-home tutoring service shares how to identify one's learning style and study effectively

Jennifer Magnolfi, Founder & Principal Investigator at Programmable Habitats LLC, on how digital work, and the Internet of Things will fundamentally change the how we use the buildings and neighborhoods we work in.

The temporary suspension of immigration will affect those who are legally seeking entry into the United States for employment but it will not impact the ones who are already living in the country, the order said.

The temporary suspension of immigration will affect those who are legally seeking entry into the United States for employment but it will not impact the ones who are already living in the country, the order said.

With over 11,000 positive COVID-19 cases in Iowa and a mounting death toll, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds went to Washington DC. to declare her approach to the pandemic a success. Her victory lap included...

With over 11,000 positive COVID-19 cases in Iowa and a mounting death toll, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds went to Washington DC. to declare her approach to the pandemic a success.

Her victory lap included a sit down with the president and a Washington Post op-ed. The op-ed was co-authored with four other GOP governors and declared, the “common-sense approach helped keep our states on track and have set us up to come out of this pandemic stronger than ever.”

On May 8, Vice President Mike Pence came to Iowa to celebrate Iowa’s success. But what does Iowa’s success actually look like?

Well, two of our counties are national hot spots for the disease.

Experts from the University of Iowa project that Iowa has yet to reach it’s peak for cases and warn that without proper measures a new wave of infection will hit the state in the fall.

Iowa’s success looks like the TestIowa initiative getting off to a slow start due to problems with the test machines and thus far, failing to achieve it’s promise of 3,000 tests per day. And mounting concerns about the accuracy of the tests, after the Des Moines Register reported that several test samples were unable to be processed.

Success looks like Minnesota having 3,000 fewer positive COVID-19 cases with 2 million more residents and nearly 40,000 more tests completed.

The week of Reynolds victory lap was the week that Iowa saw a 28 percent increase in hospitalizations, a 51 percent increase in ICU admissions, and a 39 percent increase in patients needing ventilators.

Reynolds declaring victory now is like crowning yourself the winner in Monopoly before you even made it all around the board. It’s like demanding your marathon medal on mile 13. It’s like declaring you are flattening the pandemic curve, before your COVID-19 cases skyrocket by thousands. OK, that’s not a metaphor, that’s something our governor actually did. Just weeks ago.

This is what Reynold’s success looks like: 231 deaths and vulnerable being forced to return to work before it's safe. And these are not just numbers, these are people.

Perhaps the most damaging thing that this pandemic response has done was to turn individual lives into a chart on a scoreboard. A game of chess, where we are willing to sacrifice some pawns to keep winning at making money.

AP reporter Ryan Foley noted on Twitter that those dead from COVID-19 in the state include a Bosnian refugee who left behind a heartbroken husband and a Latino father who was raising three kids on his own after their mother died of cancer last year.

Those lost include Willi Levi, one of the men who escaped servitude from the Atalissa turkey processing plant.

But as state Rep. Steve Holt argued in an op-ed this week, if we have enough room in our hospitals, why not open the economy? The logic was repeated during Reynolds May 7 news conference — our hospitals can handle it so we move forward. This is what success looks like: Enough hospital beds for us all to die in.

Before the pandemic came to the state, Holt and Reynolds were both pushing an amendment to the state constitution that would strip protections for abortion.

The Venn diagram of those people telling you COVID-19 isn’t that bad and so what, some people will die, and the people who call abortion murder is just one flat circle of hypocrisy.

Holt has even been tweeting about how shut down orders violate our personal liberty. But where is all that personal liberty when it comes to my uterus, Holt?

Our success didn’t have to look like this. Our success could have involved fewer deaths, fewer infections and a reduced risk for a resurgence, if we had just waited two more weeks.

Dr. Eli Perencevich, professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, and one of the authors of a report for the Iowa Department of Public Health, which warned against reopening too soon. He spoke to me in an interview last week, where he explained that if Iowa could have remained closed just a little longer, we’d be closer to safety. Ideally, explained Perencevich, if Iowa had truly shut down immediately and decisively for two weeks in the beginning, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Absent that, shutting down for two more weeks would ensure greater safety.

This pandemic didn’t have to be a choice between the economy or lives. We are the world’s richest nation, we could have come up with a solution. But doing so would mean that we’d have to face America’s deep inequality, we’d have to enact social change and pump money into food benefits and health care, two things Reynolds has slowly been defunding during her tenure as governor. Each of these deaths was preventable not inevitable. But our governor and federal government have given up the fight, and called it success. They’ve accepted that some people will die, and even more will get sick and lose their livelihoods and income and be forced to bear mounting medical costs.

It’s easier to say you win, before you’ve even played the game. And so here we are, dying from all this success.

lyz.lenz@thegazette.com; 319-368-8513

By Jake Johnson Common Dreams And colleague says “global warming” no longer strong enough term. “Global heating is technically more correct because we are talking about changes in the energy balance of the planet.” Declaring that after three decades of … Continue reading →

By Jake Johnson Common Dreams And colleague says “global warming” no longer strong enough term. “Global heating is technically more correct because we are talking about changes in the energy balance of the planet.” Declaring that after three decades of … Continue reading →

One of the main open problems in the qualitative theory of real planar differential systems is the study of limit cycles. In this article, we present an algorithmic approach for detecting how many limit cycles can bifurcate from the periodic orbits of a given polynomial differential center when it is perturbed inside a class of polynomial differential systems via the averaging method. We propose four symbolic algorithms to implement the averaging method. The first algorithm is based on the change of polar coordinates that allows one to transform a considered differential system to the normal form of averaging. The second algorithm is used to derive the solutions of certain differential systems associated to the unperturbed term of the normal of averaging. The third algorithm exploits the partial Bell polynomials and allows one to compute the integral formula of the averaged functions at any order. The last algorithm is based on the aforementioned algorithms and determines the exact expressions of the averaged functions for the considered differential systems. The implementation of our algorithms is discussed and evaluated using several examples. The experimental results have extended the existing relevant results for certain classes of differential systems.

Before plunging into our own likely decade of consequence, take a shallow dive into the gene pool of Northwest civilization at the dawn of the last '20s.

Unpacking the political significance of Teck's Frontier Mine, why lack of supports might push people with disabilities towards medical assistance in dying, concern for refugees as COVID-19 spreads, the weird and wonderful moments of Major League Soccer in the 1990s, WIlson Cruz on playing Rickie Vasquez on My So-Called Life, the story of the first drag queen and more.

Justice Minister David Lametti says he thinks Canadians want more access to medical assistance in dying following a court ruling that struck down provisions limiting it to people whose death is near. That’s the theme he says is emerging from the responses of nearly 300,000 Canadians to an online questionnaire that ended Jan. 27 — the largest number of responses the department has ever received during a public consultation.

This week, a bill proposes to widen eligibility for medical assistance in dying (MAID), including removing the requirement that someone's natural death be "reasonably foreseeable."

Generations of droving families have been running cattle through outback Queensland, but that could soon end as young people leave the regions in search of other opportunities.

Joan Webb has already been approved for a government-subsidised home-care package. At 93 years of age, she's now facing an 18-month wait. She's not alone.

The iconic breed first saved Casterton in 1997. Now, 23 years later and they've done it again.

Researchers are reporting an "alarming" loss in the number of qualified teacher librarians in schools, and they warn student literacy will continue to suffer if the trend is not reversed.

The culture within the Perth City Council reached its "zenith" in the lead-up to its suspension, breeding an environment unlike anything one of its councillors had experienced previously, an inquiry hears.

Opponents of a voluntary assisted dying bill in Western Australia face fresh accusations of filibustering after a Liberal MP moved hundreds of amendments to the proposed legislation.

Like sex and birth, death has always been hushed up. Death Cafes are a forum where there are no answers, only questions, says Sigari Luckwell of Bunbury.

At the end of the bitumen road and surrounded by parched grazing land, Ivanhoe, like many outback towns, is fighting for survival.

Authorities in a 'dry' Queensland community say illegal alcohol poses one of the biggest health threats to its people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Given only weeks or months to live, Gail Baker's dying wish is for her sister to travel from New Zealand to care for her toward the end of her life. But red tape is preventing her from doing so.

Gail Baker's dying wish has been granted, with her sister allowed a travel exemption to fly to Australia from New Zealand to care for her in her final days.

The renowned painter launches legal action against his stepdaughter, saying she influenced her dying mother who "suffered from cognitive impairment" to withdraw $2.2 million from a bank account in 2016.

The body camera of one of the officers killed in Wednesday's Melbourne freeway truck crash captured Richard Pusey telling Leading Senior Constable Lynette Taylor, "you've f***ed my f***ing car" as she was dying, a court has been told.

The daughters of Kerry Robertson, 61, the first Victorian to use the state's Voluntary Assisted Dying Act, say their mother's death was "beautiful and peaceful".

Despite being seriously injured during a rally event in Greece last year, Albury-based Andrew Houlihan is on track to compete in the Dakar Rally in 2021.

During the final minutes of her life, heartbeat fading, my mother was too weak to speak or open her eyes. But 1,500 miles away from where hospice had gently laid her down to die, I felt the strength of her spirit pushing me out the door. So I grabbed cross-country skis from the garage, clicked boots into my bindings and glided across a cold, empty meadow, where I surrendered Mom to the hand of God.

The California lawmaker revealed the news in House session

You would think that graduate students are all studying, networking and no fun (the last part was kind of exaggerated, but you know what I mean). However, we do have those days where we would gather and goof around. A couple of weeks ago, after our midterms, our SMF class along with our professors, decided to … Continue reading "It’s not just studying and networking!"

1. Children in US and UK dying from syndrome linked to COVID-19  World Socialist Web Site
2. Rare illness linked to coronavirus kills New York five-year-old  9News
3. Coronavirus US: Andrew Cuomo’s sad announcemet about chld infections  NEWS.com.au
4. Some children with COVID-19 showing symptoms similar to Kawasaki Disease  NEWS10 ABC
5. New fears around 'entirely different chapter' of coronavirus after boy dies from rare illness  Yahoo News Australia
6. View Full coverage on Google News