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When it’s negative to be positive.

Mallorca Nature Timelapse 1 by  Marcos Molina

Also Today in Godsmack History: The Enemy

“The Enemy” is the last single from the album IV released on October 31, 2006; six years to the day after the release of their album Awake. The song landed a spot on the Mainstream Rock Tracks at number four, just like Godsmack’s previous single “Shine Down”. “The Enemy” is performed at almost every show on the band’s “IV Tour”, and was also the official theme song for WWE’s 2006 SummerSlam PPV. This song was also included on the THQ video game, WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2007. “The Enemy” is Jason MacDonald’s most recent entrance theme in UFC Championship.

According to lead singer Sully Erna, the song is about a guy who was his friend. When Godsmack became popular, the guy was going with Erna to clubs and parties. They quit hanging out as much but the guy continued to go out to places where people knew that he knew the band. He would hang out in the VIP rooms and tell people that Godsmack was coming. Toward the end of the night, he would make up an excuse as to why Godsmack wasn’t showing up. Sully Erna felt betrayed by somebody using his name and image to acquire their own fame.

Altered Tetanus Vaccine May Protect Against Allergies and Alzheimer’s

Research from the Universities of Dundee and Oxford has shown how combining the tetanus vaccine with a viral particle that normally affects cucumbers can be used to treat psoriasis and allergies, and may even protect against Alzheimer’s disease.

The research is in Nature Vaccines. (full open access)

Biggest collection of dinosaur footprints found on Australian coast

Paleontologists have published a description of one of the best collections of dinosaur footprints on Earth from a stretch of beach on the northern coast of Western Australia. They include one of the largest dinosaur footprints known, as well as the first fossil evidence of stegosaurs in Australia.

Dinosaur footprints exposed on a Western Australia beach prove to be part of the most abundant track sites on Earth. Some are among the largest ever found.

Image by Steven Salisbury et al.

People react to fear, not love – they don’t teach that in Sunday school, but it’s true.

Richard Nixon, circa 1975. That year he was questioned by the Watergate Grand Jury, the Vietnam War ended, and OPEC raised oil prices by 10% worldwide. (via historical-nonfiction)

The nomination of unqualified non-scientist Sam Clovis is a powerful illustration of the Trump administration’s hostility both to science and to the rule of law.

Dr. Peter G. Lurie, President of Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).  Read the release.  (via climatetruth)

Bats from a single cave in China have all the building blocks of a SARS epidemic

When it struck, the contagion spread fiercely. The deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in South China in 2002 infected thousands, and ultimately killed nearly 800 people.

But where did this lethal strain come from? We may now have our answer, with a study showing bats living in a single cave in China possess all the building blocks of the deadly SARS coronavirus – and potentially the means to create a new one.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences spent five years analysing SARS viruses found in multiple species of horseshoe bats nesting in a cave in China’s Yunnan Province.

In all, the team identified 11 new strains of SARS virus carried by the bats, and a genomic analysis of these – along with strains from the same cave identified in previous research – revealed something interesting.

Previous research had suggested bat viruses could have been responsible for SARS, but scientists had never uncovered evidence of a direct ancestor to the human-infecting coronavirus in bat strains.

In the new research, that held true again – none of the viruses from the cave by themselves displayed the genetic traits of the SARS coronavirus that spread to humans, infecting more than 8,000 people during the 2002-2003 emergency.

But together, it was a different story. In this one cave, there were enough genetic ingredients among the strains to build the virus that kills humans.

“Importantly, all of the building blocks of SARS-CoV genome, including the highly variable S gene, ORF8 and ORF3, could be found in the genomes of different SARSr-CoV strains from this single location,” the researchers explain in their paper.

Hypothetically speaking, the team suggests it’s possible – even probable – that if the right strains mixed with one another in the cave, you’d end up with the direct ancestor of a virus that can infect and kill people.

The findings are reported in PLOS Pathogens.

Then let’s make some noise, shall we? Texas has a real problem providing women with adequate healthcare. This is bad.

L.A. Times Report: High Maternal Mortality Among African-American Texans Is a ‘Quiet Crisis’

Globally, maternal mortality rates have been declining over the past several years. In America, however, the maternal death rate more than doubled between 1987 and 2013. In fact, though the United States is one of the most developed countries in the world, it’s the second to last among 31 developed countries, ahead of only Mexico, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And, according to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times, black women are dying at the highest rates.

More from the Los Angeles Times:

The maternal death rate in Texas after 2010 reached “levels not seen in other U.S. states,” according to a report compiled for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, based on figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Black women in Texas are dying at the highest rates of all. A 2016 joint report by the Texas Department of State Health Services’ Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Task Force found that black mothers accounted for 11.4% of Texas births in 2011 and 2012, but 28.8% of pregnancy-related deaths.

Read the rest of the L.A. Times report here.

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Dark Matter