Preventable medical mistakes and infections are responsible for about 200,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to an investigation by the Hearst media corporation. The report comes 10 years after the Institute of Medicine's "To Err Is Human" analysis, which found that 44,000 to 98,000 people were dying annually due to these errors and called for the medical community and government to cut that number in half by 2004. 

The precise number of these deaths is still unknown because many states lack a standard or mandatory reporting system for injuries due to medical mistakes. The investigative team gathered disparate medical records, legal documents, personnel files and reports and analyzed databases to arrive at its estimate.

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A large, coal-burning utility in the U.S. and another in China have agreed to cooperate to develop methods to more cleanly burn coal, including so-called carbon capture and storage technology. Duke Energy will partner with China's Huaneng Group to further develop and build technologies to gasify coal and strip it of its impurities, including the carbon dioxide that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere from coal burning. As it stands, Huaneng releases some 285 million metric tons of CO2 per year while Duke emits 112 million metric tons, according to data from the Center for Global Development, a Washington, D.C.-based thinktank.

"We find ourselves at a pivotal point in world history," said Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers in a statement announcing the partnership. "China has committed to rapidly developing clean-energy technologies, as has the U.S.… Working together, the U.S. and China can commercialize and drive down the cost of these technologies for the benefit of the entire world."

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Thousands of turkeys in Minnesota have been quarantined after a strain of avian flu (H7N9) was found at a poultry farm there. Experts say that the strain is markedly less virulent than H5N1, the Asian strain that has caused more than 250 human deaths and millions of poultry deaths.

"It would appear that it's a pretty mild form of the avian influenza virus on this premise," Dave Lauer, the Minnesota Board of Animal Health's assistant director told Minnesota Public Radio. The station reports, however, that it's not unusual for more than a dozen cases of the low-pathogenic virus to be reported on commercial poultry farms in any given year.

Workers at the farm are, however, being monitored, as the strain has been known to cause some symptoms in humans, including minor respiratory problems and eye irritation. All turkeys within three miles of those infected will continued to be tested for the next six weeks, according to an Associated Press report. And if they are well after that, they may still go on to become dinner. An analysis by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) last year found that the risk of people coming down with avian influenza from consuming poultry is slim, but cooking the meat to 165 degrees Fahrenheit is a sure way to kill the virus.

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TORONTO—Corporal punishment has long been a hotly debated subject, with conflicting study results and opposing ideologies feeding the fire. Now the results of a five-year effort to review the scientific literature are in: a task force appointed by the American Psychological Association concludes that "parents and caregivers should reduce and potentially eliminate their use of any physical punishment as a disciplinary measure."

The recommendation was announced at the APA's annual meeting here today by the task force chair, psychologist Sandra A. Graham-Bermann of the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. In a presentation, she explained that the group of 15 experts in child development and psychology found correlations between physical punishment and an increase in childhood anxiety and depression, an increase in behavioral problems including aggression, and impaired cognitive development—even when the child's pre-punishment behavior and development was taken into consideration.

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Viruses, grueling journeys, monoculture diets. U.S. honeybees have had it rough lately, and millions have perished from the mysterious colony collapse disorder (CCD). But now some of the nation's bees have a new threat to contend with: ants. And not just any ants. These ants are crazy—Rasberry crazy ants (Paratrenicha species near pubens), to be precise.

Named for their helter-skelter scamper, which contrasts with most ants' standard rank-and-file march, the tiny, invasive ants were first noticed in near Houston in 2002 and have been destroying electronics, pestering picnickers, and gunking up sewage pumps ever since. And now they have started to go after local honeybee hives, according to a recent Associated Press report.

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The same week that the Obama Administration lost its acting cyber security czar, cyber attacks torpedoed several of the Web's most popular social-networking sites, in particular Twitter and Facebook. Although the denial-of-service attacks (which overwhelm Web servers with phony requests) were the latest reminder of the difficulties of defending the Web against cyber threats, it appears that these crashed sites were collateral damage in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Georgia. Or were they?

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For Toyota, it's not just about hybrids (that is, the Prius). Yesterday, the company announced the results of a sunny 331-mile jaunt in Southern California from Torrance to Santa Monica and back again at the end of June. Toyota engineers, accompanied by U.S. government partners, coaxed 68 miles per kilogram of hydrogen out of the Toyota Highlander Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicle (FCHV-adv). That's a range of 431 miles on a single tank at a fuel cost estimated at $2.50 per 68 miles (for hydrogen produced from natural gas).

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TORONTO—Gay or straight, male or female—everyone is having fewer affairs now than they were in the 1970s. According to a new study presented here today at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, extramarital (and extra-partnership) sex is way down, and discussion about the topic within couples is way up.

Psychologists at Alliant International University in San Francisco and their colleagues compared survey responses from two large groups of couples, self-categorized as gay men, heterosexual men, lesbians or heterosexual women. About 12,000 people answered the relevant questions in 1975; close to 1,000 participated in 2000. The average length of the relationship at the time of the survey varied between groups, from about four and a half years for lesbians, almost seven years for gay men and about 14 years for heterosexual couples in 1974 to nearly 11 years for lesbians, 13.5 years for gay men and almost 20 years together for straight couples in the 2000 survey.

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A coal industry advocacy group has acknowledged that a contractor it hired later subcontracted a D.C.-based lobbying firm that then fired off a dozen falsified letters to congressional offices, pressuring a "nay" vote on a climate bill, The New York Times reported this week. The forged notes—designed to appear as if written by members of nonprofit groups—arrived before votes were cast on major clean energy legislation; the House narrowly approved the bill on June 26.

Bonner & Associates, hired by a contractor for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), fabricated names of supposed members of the NAACP and Cresciendo Juntos, a Hispanic community group, and made them the "authors" of the would-be grassroots letters, according to the newspaper.

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Pens and clipboards are so 1997. Attractive sales reps are so 2001. They might both still be commonplace, but pharmaceutical companies have also been sinking cash into a more obscured vehicle of persuasion: peer-reviewed medical journals.

One drug company—Wyeth, maker of the hormone therapy drugs Premarin and Prempro—paid for substantial ghostwriting of 26 medical research papers published in major scientific journals between 1998 and 2005, according to The New York Times. And these writers weren’t just polishing prose. They shaped the articles from start to finish.

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