Research suggests the risks posed to the nation's nuclear reactors may have been underestimated and therefore could be worse than the power plants were designed to withstand.

U.S. nuclear power companies will be directed to reassess their reactors' vulnerability to an elevated threat from earthquakes east of the Rockies, using new computer models and seismic data released today by an industry and government project.  [sciam]

A Wisconsin virology team that created a more contagious form of bird flu did not produce a highly lethal superflu, as a Dutch team famously and controversially did last year, according to the leader of the Wisconsin team.

Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo said in a commentary published online by Nature magazine that his team’s virus had infected ferrets through the air, but that it did not kill any of them. Ferrets catch flu just as humans do. Also, he said, “Current vaccines and antiviral compounds are effective against it.”  [nytimes]

One in five Americans experienced some sort of mental illness in 2010, according to a new report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. About 5 percent of Americans have suffered from such severe mental illness that it interfered with day-to-day school, work or family.

Women were more likely to be diagnosed with mental illness than men (23 percent of women versus 16.9 percent of men), and the rate of mental illness was more than twice as likely in young adults (18 to 25) than people older than 50.

About 11.4 million adult Americans suffered from severe mental illness in the past year and 8.7 million adults contemplated serious thoughts of suicide. Among them, more than 2 million made suicide plans and about 1 million attempted suicide. [yahoo]

In an unusual move, an international coalition of flu researchers agreed last week to a hiatus on work surrounding a highly contagious, mammal-adapted version of the avian influenza virus . Research on transmissible H5N1 flu will halt, and two manuscripts describing how to modify the virus won’t be published, at least not yet.

The voluntary pause came a few weeks after an American advisory panel recommended censoring the research in the name of security. So it raises an interesting question - is some research just too dangerous to pursue? Not just for the scientists conducting it, but for the public in a post-9/11 world? [popsci]

*UPDATED Information: Up-to-the-minute updates on the storm can be found here. A major early season severe weather outbreak has taken shape tonight, spanning about a dozen states from the Deep South to the Ohio Valley.

Some of the thunderstorms are even expected to spawn tornadoes, making for an especially dangerous situation given the veil of night.

Several factors have come together for this rare, significant January severe weather event. A cold front marking the leading edge of colder air will slice into an unusually warm and moist air mass.

In a joint letter to the journals Science and Nature, 39 researchers from around the world emphasize that their laboratories are safe and secure but they nevertheless acknowledge that there is grave public concern about the accidental or deliberate release of an "airborne" strain of H5N1 avian influenza which could be transmitted easily between people.

The U.S. Congress is about to censor the Internet!!!

CONTACT CONGRESS TODAY & VOICE YOUR OPPOSITION TO THESE BILLS! - Contact Congress! - Contact Congress!!!

WARNING: IF THESE BILLS PASS YOUR FAVORITE WEBSITES WILL BE FORCED OFF THE INTERNET FOREVER! GET OFF YOUR ASS AND CONTACT CONGRESS NOW!!!

Learn more at AmericanCensorship.org

The minute-hand on the 64-year-old concept clock has edged forward to show that "inadequate progress" has been made on containing the global threat posed by nuclear weapons and climate change, said scientists. It now shows five minutes to midnight (the zero hour).

"Two years ago it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed," the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), said.

In a list of reasons for raising the danger bar, the BAS said it finds the current potential for nuclear conflict in the Middle East, north-east Asia and south Asia alarming. It accuses the US, China, Iran, India, Pakistan, Egypt and Israel for failing to act on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and North Korea for its nuclear weapons program.

As with every New Year there’s no shortage of forecasts for what’s to come. This year we, too, will attempt to interpret the crystal ball and share some items for consideration and a road map of events to keep an eye out for. We don’t like to make time-sensitive forecasts, because if there’s one thing we should have learned from the last three years, it’s that the expedient and self serving actions of governments, corporate conglomerates, and politicians are anything but predictable and often supersede any timetable we can come up with. In an environment based on incomplete information it is difficult to conclude, with any degree of certainty, which events will play out, when, how and what their consequences will be.

Who could have accurately predicted that governments would undertake the largest tax-payer funded bailout in history after the collapse of the financial system in 2008, further expanding the multi-trillion dollar global debt bubble, instead of letting it correct itself naturally? How many actually believed, amid protests from millions of Americans, that Congress would follow through with the passage of socialized health care in what it supposed to be the world’s bastion of free market capitalism? Who truly believed that American citizens would be, in one sweeping broad stroke, marked as persons-of-interest and domestic extremists for seemingly innocent behavior that can now land them in a detention facility for life without charge or trial? Did anyone foresee a complete collapse of the middle class, the wipe-out of trillions of dollars in retirement and pension savings through stock losses and inflation, the decimation of the domestic job market and wages, or the record levels of poverty stricken Americans requesting food assistance and unemployment insurance? [shtfplan]

Shaky Europe. Political gridlock. Volatile markets.

In the new survey mentioned above, those contacted were asked to select the top three potential catastrophes that worry them the most... [shtfplan]

The United Nations health body said it was "deeply concerned about the potential negative consequences" of work by two leading flu research teams who this month said they had found ways to make H5N1 into a easily transmissable form capable of causing lethal human pandemics.

The work by the teams, one in The Netherlands and one in the United States, has already prompted an unprecedented censorship call from U.S. security advisers who fear that publishing details of the research could give potential attackers the know-how to make a bioterror weapon. [yahoo]

 Kim Jong-il Dead? (Breaking on MSNBC / CNN News)

Kim Jong-il, also written as Kim Jong Il, birth name Yuri Irsenovich Kim (According to Soviet records) (16 February 1941 (Soviet records) or 16 February 1942 (North Korean records) – 17 December 2011), was the Supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). He was the Chairman of the National Defence Commission, General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, the ruling party since 1948, and the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, the fourth largest standing army in the world. In April 2009, North Korea's constitution was amended and now implicitly refers to him as the "Supreme Leader". He was also referred to as the "Dear Leader", "our Father", "the General" and "Generalissimo". His son Kim Jong-un was promoted to a senior position in the ruling Workers' Party and is heir apparent. In 2010 he was ranked 31st in Forbes Magazine's List of The World's Most Powerful People.

The North Korean government announced his death on December 18, 2011.

A city in southern Mexico wants to live each moment as if it were the last.

Tourism officials in Tapachula have installed a digital clock to count down the time left before the Dec. 21, 2012, solstice, when some believe the Mayan long-count calendar "runs out."

The clock will be started this Dec. 21, a year before what many see as an apocalyptic event. [msnbc]

Despite the ruckus surrounding the date Dec. 21, 2012, the world is not at risk of coming to a halt, NASA says. Aside from that date marking next year's winter solstice, the longest night of that year, nothing else interesting is expected.

All in all, "sleep well on Dec. 21 of next year," said astronomer Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object program office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., at a public talk Thursday about rumors of a 2012 apocalypse.

"What's so special about Dec. 12 of next year?" Yeomans asked. "A lot of people think it's the end of the Maya calendar. " [msnbc]

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Yellowstone National Park sits on top of a vast, ancient, and still active volcano. Heat pours off its underground magma chamber, and is the fuel for Yellowstone's famous features -- more than 10,000 hot springs, mud pots, terraces and geysers, including Old Faithful.

But expected development by energy companies right outside Yellowstone's borders have some fearing that Old Faithful could be cheated out of its energy.

"If that geothermal development outside of the park begins, we need to know whether that's going to cause Old Faithful to suddenly stop spewing," says Rick Lawrence of Montana State University. [SD]

After hibernating for more than seven months, a set of radio telescopes run by the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute has once again begun listening for signals from the many alien planet candidates discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope, researchers announced Monday (Dec. 5).

"This morning, at 6:18, we began re-observing the Kepler worlds," Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute, said Monday during the Kepler Science Conference here at NASA's Ames Research Center. "We're just extremely excited to be back on the air today."

• Scientist responsible is bracing himself for a media storm
• Just five tweaks to H5N1 makes it more contagious
• Contagious version of bird flu could cause pandemic
• Scientists divided over whether findings can be released

A group of scientists is pushing to publish research about how they created a man-made flu virus that could potentially wipe out civilization.

The deadly virus is a genetically tweaked version of the H5N1 bird flu strain, but is far more infectious and could pass easily between millions of people at a time.

The research has caused a storm of controversy and divided scientists, with some saying it should never have been carried out.

Most experts had cited only one surviving reference to the date in Mayan glyphs, a stone tablet from the Tortuguero site in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco.

But the National Institute of Anthropology and History said in a statement that there is in fact another apparent reference to the date at the nearby Comalcalco ruin. The inscription is on the carved or molded face of a brick. Comalcalco is unusual among Mayan temples in that it was constructed of bricks.

"There is little chance that we will be able to achieve this mission," the deputy head of Roscosmos, Vitaly Davydov, was quoted as saying by the Itar-Tass news agency. "We need to be realists. Since we could not establish contact for so long, the chances to carry out this expedition right now are very slim."

The unmanned Phobos-Grunt spacecraft blasted off toward the Red Planet on Nov. 9, where it was hoped to bring back rock and soil samples from the moon Phobos.

Judging by the run of successful natural disaster films in the past few years, people are fascinated by the idea of the end of the world. In Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, a virus ravaged the UK and beyond; an asteroid was the world-ending threat in Deep Impact and Armageddon; and climate change got a starring role in The Day After Tomorrow.

In the real world, we don't know how the Earth (or humanity) might meet its end or when that will happen. Pondering and predicting the event has usually been a job for the world's great religions: all of them have some idea about how humans will meet their maker. Indeed, "the end" (or judgement day) is usually a deity's way of cleansing our planet, to allow a fresh race of people who are morally purer to repopulate the resulting clean slate. Usually, there is too much sin or debauchery and the time has come to start again.

Stories of brimstone, fire and gods make good tales and do a decent job of stirring up the requisite fear and jeopardy. But made-up doomsday tales pale into nothing, creatively speaking, when contrasted with what is actually possible. Look through the lens of science and "the end" becomes much more interesting.

The Leonid meteor shower peaks tonight (Nov. 17), but bright moonlight is threatening to wash out this year's light display.

The annual Leonid meteor shower is expected to reach peak activity tonight at approximately 10:40 p.m. EST (0340 GMT on Nov. 18), but a luminous third quarter moon could outshine even the brightest meteors, said Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

"The moon is going to be a major interference, but we could see a rate of about 20 per hour," Cooke told SPACE.com.

Meteor showers occur when Earth orbits through clouds of particles and dust on its path around the sun. Meteors are often referred to as "shooting stars," because of how they streak across the sky, but these dazzling streaks of light are really triggered by pieces of debris that hit Earth's atmosphere and burn up.

The dispute springs from a situation in which police affixed a GPS tracking device to a suspect's car without a proper warrant. It monitored the suspect's movements for several weeks, noting where his vehicle went and how long it stayed at each location.

The snow was due to stop falling in New England late Sunday, but Halloween will likely come and go before many of the more than 3 million without electricity see it restored, officials warned. Several referred to the combination of the storm's early arrival and its ferocity as historic, yet another unwelcome superlative for weather-weary Northeasterners.

"You had this storm, you had Hurricane Irene, you had the flooding last spring and you had the nasty storms last winter," Tom Jacobsen said Sunday while getting coffee at a convenience store in Hamilton Township, N.J.

"I'm starting to think we really ticked off Mother Nature somehow because we've been getting spanked by her for about a year now."