Science is great at finding new rules for expectant mothers.  They already can’t have alcohol, caffeine, or cigarettes. They also need to stay away from their cat’s litterbox, stay off of planes and rollercoasters, stay off of antidepressants, drop their acne medication, and forgo even a well-considered vegan diet.

Now they have to avoid the Hong Kong flu, too.  The Annals of Neurobiology recently published a study that suggested that exposure to the Hong Kong virus during the first trimester of pregnancy may contribute to decreased adult intelligence.  

The Hong Kong flu is fairly easy to avoid now.  But it was everywhere in 1969 and 1970.  It reached its Norwegian apex in the spring of 1970, affecting up to 40% of the population.  

The setup to the classic Melting Ice Cube problem goes something like this: “Fifty grams of ice are melting in a 100-mililiter cup of 35-degree water.” Using simple principles of energy transfer, we can estimate what the final temperature of the water will be, and how much energy transfer was required to make the ice melt.  

But what if that ice cube was 20,000 square miles and the cup of water was 300 million cubic miles?  What if the ice reflected incoming heat but the water absorbed it?  And what if hurricanes, droughts, and forest fires depended on the outcome?  

Dave Cooper’s pet mantis, Cinco Zapatos, was a good-looking Giant African Mantis with a notable distinguishing feature: her sixth leg was missing.  It didn’t seem to hamper her much.  Her first weeks as Dave’s insect familiar were uneventful until Dave returned from a three-day trip to find that Cinco Zapatos had molted—and had become Seis Zapatos in the process. Cinco Zapatos had regrown most of her leg.  

It’s the same story over and over: he enters a new environment, wastes it, and grabs what he needs from his surroundings to make a clever escape. But this time there’s less mullet and more microscope. Parasites like Plasmodium hijack your own enzymes to leave a dying cell, like opportunistic MacGyvers stuffing useful proteins into their microscopic man-purses.

Remember when Bugs Bunny dressed as Brunhilda to mess with opera viking Elmer Fudd? If the What's Opera, Doc? ended with Bugs biting off half of Elmer Fudd’s head to keep him hanging around as an immobile food source, then the "Kill The Wabbit" cartoon would essentially tell the story of the Spotted Predatory Katydid. This bug-of-prey lures lovesick male cicadas by decoding the complex cicada mating duet and imitating a lusty cicada female. As soon as the male cicada gets in grabbing range, the duet becomes a lot less romantic.

Welcome to what has become Inadvertent Cicada Week in this column.  Obviously, I'm fascinated by them.  This started around the summer of 2003, when I was completely addicted to a certain farm-simulator game for the Nintendo SP. 

During virtual summer on my virtual farm the game's music was overpowered by a jarring REEEREEEREEEREEEEEEE sound, intended to represent Japan’s singing cicadas.  When I finally managed to turn my Gameboy off to get some good ol’ grad student day-sleep in the relative stillness of central Pennsylvania, I found that the REEEREEEEEEEE noise had followed me.