Health risks for the 21st century worker keep getting weirder. Researchers at North Carolina State University have found that quantum dots—nanoparticles made of semiconducting crystals that emit light when stimulated at certain wavelengths—can penetrate skin through abrasions.

What makes a disease deadly in the twenty-first century? Medicine has never been more advanced; our understanding of spread and infection, never more sophisticated. And yet, we may be poised for the largest and most devastating pandemic the human race has ever encountered.

With global warming grabbing headlines, carbon-free nuclear power is gaining popularity—and with it, concerns over what to do with the spent uranium fuel. The largest long-term burial project, Yucca Mountain, has stalled, and even though uranium’s first trip through a reactor extracts only 5 percent of its energy, power plants in the U.S. don’t reprocess fuel. This is mainly because the most common form of uranium, an ion called uranyl, is extremely difficult to extract from the spent fuel rods. But a new Pac-Man-like molecule could change that.

Much like cold fusion, nano-computing always seems ten years off. The years go by, technology advances, but the goal doesn’t seem to get any closer. Last week, however, a team of Purdue University scientists reported overcoming a major hurdle in the path to creating a functional quantum computer.

Specialists in infectious disease worry about drug resistance all the time. The most difficult challenge in the fight against bacterial infection is to stay out in front of the organisms before they develop resistance to medications. But what happens when the organism is us and the disease is high blood pressure?

An increasing number of patients are failing to respond to blood pressure medications. It's what's known as resistant hypertension—blood pressure that remains elevated even after treatment with three or more different medications.

The Brits are murdering pigeons. Unable to prevent the pests from pooping on the stuffy spectators and sweater-vested tennis players at the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (aka Wimbledon), officials have hired marksmen and instructed them to shoot to kill. Previous attempts to control the pigeons by releasing hawks were unsuccessful. PETA argues that shooting the birds is "cruel and illegal."

Awww, how could anyone test experimental pharmaceuticals on that little face? A few new technologies -- substitute tissues, for instance -- aim to take the rat out of the equation, or at least provide other, gentler options for experimenters. Here's a look at three of the best new hopes for rodents.