Last week I talked about some H1N1 numbers from the CDC. The numbers I highlighted were by and large from either the CDC's focused surveillance sites, or based on reports voluntarily submitted by various hospitals, providers, etc.  Carl Zimmer has highlighted the CDC's effort to estimate the big picture - total infections, hospitalizations, and deaths nationwide. At this point, the CDC says there has been no seasonal flu - almost all flu cases have been H1N1.

While trying to develop a vaccine for AIDS, researchers have uncovered a biological catch-22 that's been hindering their chances of success. They say that while the immune system can produce cells with the potential to manufacture HIV-blocking antibodies, it also works equally hard to eliminate those cells before they have a chance to mature.

Over the years, scientists have assumed that B cells – one of the first lines of defense against infection – are simply not able to "see" the HIV virus. HIV has the ability to hide its most vulnerable parts from immune system surveillance, and researchers generally assumed that
helped explain why B cells often took weeks and even months to arise following infection.

Analysis of microfossils found in ocean sediment cores is illuminating the environmental conditions that prevailed at high latitudes during a critical period of Earth history.

Around 55 million years ago at the beginning of the Eocene epoch, the Earth's poles are believed to have been free of ice. But by the early Oligocene around 25 million years later, ice sheets covered Antarctica and continental ice had developed on Greenland.

NASA researchers studying urban landscapes say the intensity of the "heat island" created by a city depends on the ecosystem it replaced and on the regional climate where the city is located. Urban areas developed in arid and semi-arid regions show far less heating compared with the surrounding countryside than cities built amid forested and temperate climates.

Holographic Hot Horizons