The Download: detecting bird flu, and powering industrial processes with nuclear energy

Over the winter, eggs suddenly became all but impossible to buy. As a bird flu outbreak rippled through dairy and poultry farms, grocery stores struggled to keep them on shelves. The shortages and record-high prices in February raised costs dramatically for restaurants and bakeries and led some shoppers to skip the breakfast staple entirely. But a team based at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a device that could help slow future outbreaks by detecting bird flu in air samples in just five minutes. Read the full story. —Carly Kay This story is from the next edition of our print magazine, which is all about the body. Subscribe now to read it and get a copy of the magazine when it lands! This Texas chemical plant could get its own nuclear reactors Nuclear reactors could someday power a chemical plant in Texas, making it the first with such a facility onsite. The factory, which makes plastics and other materials, could become a model for power-hungry data centers and ... Read full article.