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(credit: California Stem Cell Agency)

On Thursday, the National Institutes of Health announced that it was revising the rules that govern its funding of stem cell research. The rules focus on cases where human stem cells are introduced into embryonic animals, creating an embryo that's a mixture of human and animal tissues. While the rules would lift a blanket moratorium on funding for this research, they'd also tighten the regulations that were in place prior to the moratorium.

An animal that's a mixture of two different organisms is called a chimaera. While they're named after mythological beasts, creating them is rather run-of-the-mill in modern research, where chimaeras between different mouse strains are an essential part of knocking out genes to study the effects. Human-mouse chimaeras are also quite common, as we inject human tumor cells into mice to study cancer and replace the mouse immune system with a human one in order to study diseases like AIDS.

Some stem cell research would be similar in nature. For example, if you wanted to determine if it is safe and effective to use stem cells to repair cardiac injury in humans, a reasonable first step would be to see what happens when you inject human stem cells into an adult mouse that has a damaged heart.

(credit: Matt Reinbold)

Yesterday, Verizon faced complaints from customers and government officials about maintenance of its copper network in areas of New Jersey. Hearings were held yesterday by the state Board of Public Utilities (BPU) on Verizon service in rural parts of South Jersey, where the company hasn't upgraded its networks to fiber. About 200 "frustrated residents" attended and nearly 80 signed up to speak, airing their complaints for hours, according to a story on NJ.com.

Theresa Duffy-Diamond of Cedarville owns three businesses but complained that she has trouble running them because of how hard it is to make phone calls. She played a voicemail that she received—it contained "nothing but crackling sounds," the article said.

63-year-old John Dowling of Estell Manor, who suffers from a chronic lung disease and needs frequent medical attention, reported not being able to make phone calls from his landline when it rains. When he complains to Verizon, "four days later they would come out on a sunny day and say the lines are all clear," he said.

Hurricane Earl on Wednesday, shortly before it made landfall in Belize. (credit: NOAA)

On Thursday some meteorologists (who are by nature a cheesy lot) had an opportunity to channel their inner Dixie Chick and sing "Goodbye Earl" as yet another hurricane went into the Yucatan Peninsula to die. Most of the rest of the United States yawned—another hurricane in the Atlantic, and no harm done.

But the hurricane was remarkable precisely because of this. Earl, which attained a maximum wind speed of 80 mph before striking Belize, marked another in a long line of hurricanes that have formed in the Atlantic basin—the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico—but have not affected the United States.

Consider some of the following statistics: the last hurricane to reach the Gulf of Mexico was Ingrid in September, 2013. The current, nearly three-year-long drought for the Gulf has not been equaled since at least 1851. The drought in hurricanes that make Florida landfalls is even more pronounced. The Sunshine State, which juts into the Atlantic Ocean like a lightning rod for tropical weather, has not been hit by a hurricane since Wilma (2005). Earl was in fact the 67th Atlantic hurricane in a row to not make landfall in Florida, according to hurricane scientist Phil Klotzbach. The previous record was a mere 33 hurricanes, a streak between Hurricanes David (1979) and Elena (1985).