Environment

One of Brazil’s most senior health officials has admitted that the Zika virus outbreak is much worse than originally believed, due to the fact that most patients display no symptoms.  Health Minister Marcelo Castro said that Brazil will begin mandatory reporting of all cases by local government next week when most laboratories will have more up-to-date testing facilities. Yahoo News reports: On Monday, the World Health Organization declared the Zika outbreak to be a global emergency, a decision that should help fast-track international action and research priorities.

Two years after China’s Chang’e-3 lunar rover started exploring the moon, the National Space Administration has released hundreds of true color HD photos of the lunar surface for the world to see. New China TV YouTube video: China’s Yutu rover reveals Moon’s “complex” geological history RT reports: The China National Space Administration published images, videos and scientific data on its website, making them available to anyone who registers.

Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder have said that toxic substances in fracking fluid have been found in many everyday household items, including toothpaste, detergent, and ice cream.  Their findings, published in the journal Analytical Chemistry, prove what many people have long-thought: that contamination of water supplies may be traceable to the chemicals used in fracking.

Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Arizona State University, writes in the New Yorker about the Doomsday Clock, which was created in 1947 by people associated with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

A recent academic paper was published a few days ago which purports to discredit all conspiracy theories – using bad mathematics to prove its point.   The paper, “On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs,” suggests that many popular conspiracy theories would require an extraordinary number of people to be hiding something in order for them to be true. For instance, if you believe climate change to be fraudulent, the paper’s author suggests that tens of thousands of climate change researchers and scientists would need to be actively covering it up.