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Des Moines, Iowa — More than 4 million chickens in Iowa will have to be killed after a case of the highly pathogenic bird flu was detected at a large egg farm, the state announced Tuesday.Crews are in the process of killing 4.2 million chickens after the disease was found at a farm in Sioux County, Iowa, making it the latest in a yearslong outbreak that now is affecting dairy cattle as well. Last week, the virus was confirmed at an egg farm west of Minneapolis, Minnesota, leading to the slaughter of nearly 1.4 million chickens.Overall, 92.34 million birds have been killed since the outbreak began in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.Although bird flu has become somewhat common among poultry, its spread to cattle has added to worries about the disease. In May, a second d...

When temperatures rise, many people strip down. But when you’re dressing for a hot day, how to get away with wearing as little as possible isn’t the only factor to consider.In hot temperatures, your body sweats to cool itself down. When sweat evaporates, it takes some of your body heat with it, helping to keep you comfortable. So when you’re getting dressed during a heatwave, it's best to choose garments that will make the evaporation process as easy as possible, says Guowen Song, who runs the Lab for Heat and Thermal Protection Research at Iowa State University.“We human beings really need to balance heat and moisture to feel good,” Song says. “That’s why in different seasons we wear different things. The clothing mediates how much heat dissipates into the environment.” Here’s what to wea...

The first thing you say when someone tells you their bad news determines where the rest of the conversation goes—and, sometimes, where the relationship goes. Responding in a less-than-ideal way can prompt your conversation partner to pull back and decide, “‘Well, I’m not going to bring that to you anymore,’” says Jenny Dreizen, an etiquette expert and the Scotland-based co-founder of Fresh Starts Registry, a website that offers dozens of scripts in order to provide words for moments that leave you at a loss. “We all get blank-page syndrome,” she says. “None of us know how to do this.”With that in mind, we asked Dreizen and other experts to share their favorite ways to respond to someone who’s sharing bad news, from the trivial to the unimaginable.“The disappointment is so real. I’m here to...

A second farmworker in the U.S. has tested positive for bird flu, public health officials from the patient’s home state of Michigan announced May 22. During a press conference, health officials said the case was “not unexpected,” given the ongoing spread of avian influenza among birds and mammals in the U.S., and that risk to the general public remains low. But the case raises the question: is human-to-human transmission of bird flu a serious concern?Not at this point, according to Dr. Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “We have not seen evidence of other cases in this area or elsewhere in any of our monitoring systems, let alone any evidence of human-to-human transmission,” Shah said during the May 22 press briefing. “This i...