"FRANKFORT, Ky. (Reuters) - The mosquito-borne West Nile virus has killed an 84-year-old Kentucky man, state health officials said on Tuesday....The Kentucky victim, not immediately identified, lived in Union County in western Kentucky south of Evansville, Indiana and died Monday, the Kentucky Cabinet for Health Services said."

Reuters | West Nile Death Reported in Kentucky

""It's a photo, but it's not like I have a test tube of it," O'Reilly said. "They still have that instant reaction. It makes people think of the paradox of something being beautiful but intellectually horrifying." "

Behold: 'Ebola Is Beautiful'

"A genetic mutation might explain why only one fifth of people infected with West Nile virus go on to develop symptoms - and why only one fifth of these people develop a severe, often fatal, brain inflammation, say French researchers. "

New Scientist - Genetic susceptibility to West Nile virus

"No one complained two years ago when the University of North Carolina required its incoming freshmen to read a book about the lingering effects of the Civil War, nor last year when it assigned a book about a Hmong immigrant's struggle with epilepsy and American medicine.
But this year, the university in Chapel Hill is asking all 3,500 incoming freshmen to read a book about Islam and finds itself besieged in federal court and across the airwaves by Christian evangelists and other conservatives."

A Timely Subject -- and a Sore One (washingtonpost.com)

"As chairwoman of the inaugural IEEE Computer Society Bioinformatics Conference, held at Stanford University last week, Markstein is trying to recruit the leading minds of computer science into what she calls "the industrial revolution of biology," an anticipated period of discovery resulting from the analysis of genomic information. "

Biology Seeks a Few Good Geeks

The Journal of Biology, an "open-source" biology journal offering free and immediate access to primary research articles, has been launched. This has been memed previously, but I thought I would bring attention to it again, due to the fact that there are some articles there now.

Journal of Biology

More Snakehead fish fun. I just wanted to meme this because it includes a picture.

Maryland poisoning alien snakehead fish

I put this under humor, because I found it to be funny. I can't believe someone did an actual study on this. I thought it was just a given:)

They Needed a Study for This?

This is a continuation of the story on Snakeheads, those fish that can walk on land for days. The article talks about how this fish was introduced into the pond (aKa by a moron), and their plans for killing the fish (sad that they have to do that). Morbidly, it also gives a website (www.snakeheads.org) where you can get recipes for cooking this fish.

Snakeheads Put Small Maryland Pond on World Map

"Handmade cloning, a new way to create genetically identical copies of animals, is not only cheaper and simpler than existing methods, but appears to work better too."

Interesting...I would love to see a more technical article about this.

New Scientist - 'Handmade' cloning cheap and easy