This weekend, someone once again wanted my assurance that Project Calliope would not cause an environmental disaster when it reenters at the end of its mission.

Earlier I'd discussed how it will completely burn up on reentry, leaving nothing that could hit the ground.  However, given people need additional reassurance, I offer this statement.

I guarantee that Project Calliope will not cause a zombie outbreak.

You might think, 'doesn't every satellite promise that-- yet how can he guarantee, with 100% certainty, that his satellite won't infect the Earth with an alien virus that causes zombie outbreaks?'

Dengue fever has emerged as a worldwide problem only since the 1950s.

The name ‘dengue’ is thought to have origins in the Swahili language, “Ki-Dinga pepo” used to describe a dengue-like illness reported in Africa during the 19th century.

The Dengue is cause of illness and death in the tropics and subtropics.

The more TV parents watch, the more their children watch and are less active as a result, say the authors of a new study in BMC Public Health. 

The study found that higher parental TV viewing was associated with an increased risk of high levels of TV viewing for both boys and girls. For girls, the relative risk of watching more than four hours of TV per day was 3.67 times higher if the girl's parent watched two-four hours of TV per day, when compared to girls who watched less than two hours of TV per day.

A study in Current Biology has confirmed that the brain chemical dopamine plays a role in decision making by influencing our expectations of the pleasure associated with the outcomes of our choices.

Dopamine's role in reward learning and reward-seeking behavior has been established in animals, said Tali Sharot of University College London. In humans, however, much less was known. Her team recently found that when we imagine future events, activity in a dopamine-laden part of the brain tracks people's estimates of the expected pleasure to be derived from those events. Based on these findings, the researchers suspected that they could alter people's expectations, and with them their choices, by manipulating dopamine levels in the subjects' brains.

A team of researchers has developed a model that can recereate famous historical monuments. 
The project makes it possible to create three-dimensional plans with colour images of historical and artistic places of interest. The data is recorded by laser scanners that take the maximum number of geometric measurements from a minimum number of positions
"With this methodology an exact model of the monuments or places of interest can be obtained in a virtual way", Pedro Martín-Lerones, co-author of the study and researcher at the Cartif Foundation in the Technological Park of Boecillo (Valladolid), explains to SINC.

Scientists have developed a new influenza vaccine that may one day eliminate the need for seasonal flu shots. The new findings were published in the inaugural issue of mBio.

The current seasonal influenza vaccine is strain-specific, targeting the globular head of the hemaglutinin (HA) molecule on the surface of the influenza virus. This globular head is highly variable and constantly changing from strain to strain. Each flu season presents a different strain, making it necessary to adjust the vaccine each year.

The 20th Century was one of the driest for Northwest Africa in Nine Centuries, according to a new study from Arizona State University. Droughts in the late 20th century rivaled some of North Africa's major droughts of centuries past.

The first multi-century drought reconstruction that includes Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia shows frequent and severe droughts during the 13th and 16th centuries and the latter part of the 20th century. The study will be published in Climate Dynamics.

Researchers reconstructed northwest Africa's climate history by using the information recorded in tree rings. The oldest trees sampled contain climate data from the medieval period. One tree-ring sample from Morocco dates back to the year 883.

What is the best way to address the obesity epidemic? Several experts debated the subject in the most recent issue of the British Medical Journal. 

Researchers from the Children's Hospital at Westmead and the University of Sydney in Australia  argue that physical inactivity is just one marker and that there is substantial evidence that unhealthy diets low in fibre and high in sugar and large portion size are also responsible for obesity and the diseases associated with it.

The debate over what wiped out the dinosaurs has been raging for three decades, and researchers writing in Science say they have compiled enough evidence to end it. They say it really was an asteroid that was responsible for the mass extinction. 

Scientists first proposed the asteroid impact theory of dinosaur mass extinction 30 years ago. The discovery of a massive crater at Chicxulub [CHICK-shuh-loob], in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula in 1991, strengthened that hypothesis. The Chicxulub crater is more than 120 miles wide and scientists believe it was created when an asteroid more than six miles wide crashed into Earth 65 million years ago. 

A Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or above, a standard indicator of obesity, is not associated with poorer health among adults under age 40, according to a new study.

In addition, researchers found that across all age groups studied, from 25 to 70 years, there was little difference in the current health status in normal-weight vs. overweight people based on the medications they took.

The study was published in the International Journal of Obesity.

The researchers acknowledge that health problems in older adults with BMIs of 30 or higher might be traced back to carrying extra weight in young adulthood. Among people age 40 or older, use of medication was significantly higher among adults considered to be obese compared to adults with a normal weight.