The flu has hit so hard and heavy this year, some doctors are running out of supplies.

"I have heard from private practices that they are running short on the rapid flu tests," says Allegheny General Hospital Emergency Medicine physician Dr. Tom Campbell. "I think they could make some decision on who it was most important to get the test on, who was most at risk, and use the same number they might have left."

Restocking these 10-minute tests isn't so easy.

"We went to purchase more because of the use we've had this year, and they're not available," says Dr. James DeAngelo, of Allergy and Clinical Immunology Associates.

It is well known that when Europeans arrived in the New World they brought with them appalling diseases to which the indigenous population, having never been exposed to them before, were particularly susceptible. Very large numbers died of from illnesses including smallpox, measles, mumps and influenza.

These acknowledged killers, however, were comparatively late arrivals in Europe's brutal colonisation.

In Mexico, at least, another disease laid waste to the locals, starting in 1545, very soon after the invaders landed. And with the next disease came a new word, growing out of the local tongue: cocoliztli, meaning pestilence, or epidemic.

Between 1545 and 1550, a disease roared through the indigenous Mexican population, killing an estimated 800,000. And while there is plenty of evidence to support the fact that the epidemic took place, until now there has been precious little to identify the pathogenic culprit.

Researchers led by Ashlid Vagene of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, have now unmasked the killer. To do so they extracted biological material from between the teeth of 24 corpses interred in a cocoliztli cemetery in the town of Teposcolula-Yucundaa in the Oaxaca region of Mexico.

The death toll from plague in Madagascar has risen to 195 as experts warn the outbreak of the disease has reached crisis point.

A total of 2,267 people have now been infected by the illness since the outbreak began in August, according to the World Health Organisation - a jump of three per cent in recent days.

Experts fear the bacteria that cause the plague could become resistant to antibiotics as a result of doctors over-subscribing medication in a bid to control the spread of the illness - potentially creating a strain of plague that is far more difficult to treat.

The outbreak is thought to be the worst in 50 years and scientists fear it could spread to mainland Africa and beyond.

The current spread of the disease is unusual in that most of those affected have had the pneumonic form of plague, which affects the lungs and can kill within 24 hours. It can be transmitted through the air via coughing and sneezing and so spreads easily.

This post is a response to "Variation of the Solar Microwave Spectrum in the Last Half Century", Masumi Shimojo et al. Astrophysical Journal, Volume 848, Number 1.

The abstract states:

"... we found that the microwave spectra at the solar minima of Cycles 20-24 agree with each other. These results show that the average atmospheric structure above the upper chromosphere in the quiet-Sun has not varied for half a century, and suggest that the energy input for atmospheric heating from the sub-photosphere to the corona have not changed in the quiet-Sun despite significantly differing strengths of magnetic activity in the last five solar cycles."

See Figure 1 above.

• The World Health Organization now states there are 1,801 suspected cases
• This is significantly higher than the 1,309 the agency reported last Thursday
• Professor Robin May, an infectious diseases expert at Birmingham University, told MailOnline that the outbreak is 'concerning definitely'
• Analysis of figures by MailOnline show the epidemic could strike a further 20,000 people in just a matter of weeks, if current trends continue
• The 'unprecedented' outbreak has prompted warnings in 9 nearby countries

The deadly airborne plague spreading rapidly across Madagascar is now at 'crisis' point as cases have rocketed by 37 per cent in just five days, official figures reveal.

The outbreak, the 'worst in 50 years', is being fueled by a strain more lethal than the one which usually strikes the country off the coast of Africa.

The World Health Organization (WHO) now states there are 1,801 suspected cases - significantly higher than the 1,309 it reported last Thursday.

Academics have revealed such a jump in cases over the period of five days is concerning and have predicted it could get worse. The most recent statistics show there have been 127 deaths.

Professor Robin May, an infectious diseases expert at Birmingham University, told MailOnline that 'whichever way you look' at the outbreak, it's 'concerning definitely'.

World health experts today warned an outbreak of the Black Death in Madagascar will get even worse.

More than 100 have been killed and 1,300 infected with the pneumonic plague since August - leading UK authorities to warn Brits off visiting the African wildlife paradise.

And now health officials are warning things will get even worse before they get better.

Olivier Le Guillou of Action Again Hunger said: "We have not yet reached the peak."

Health officials say the disease has now become much more contagious because it is now being transmitted from person-to-person through the air as well as from animals to humans through infected flea bites.

The disease, which contributed to the deaths of more than 50 million people in Europe during the Middle Ages, has spread from rural areas into urban areas which are not usually affected.

Sri Lanka celebrated its eradication of malaria last year. But now the country faces another mosquito-borne illness: dengue fever. It's also sometimes known as "breakbone fever" because of the severe pain it can cause.

A dengue outbreak has left some Sri Lankan hospitals so full that they're turning away patients, says Gerhard Tauscher, an operations manager with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. He is based in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka.

More than 107,000 suspected cases of dengue have been reported so far this year, according to Sri Lanka's ministry of health.

That's almost twice the number of people diagnosed with dengue in Sri Lanka last year. The death toll from this outbreak is about 300 people, the IFRC says.

The California state Assembly passed a $3-billion subsidy program for electric vehicles, dwarfing the existing program. The bill is now in the state Senate. If passed, it will head to Governor Jerry Brown, who has not yet indicated if he'd sign what is ostensibly an effort to put EV sales into high gear, but below the surface appears to be a Tesla bailout.

Tesla will soon hit the limit of the federal tax rebates, which are good for the first 200,000 EVs sold in the US per manufacturer beginning in December 2009 (IRS explanation). In the second quarter after the manufacturer hits the limit, the subsidy gets cut in half, from $7,500 to $3,750; two quarters later, it gets cut to $1,875. Two quarters later, it goes to zero.

Given Tesla's ambitious US sales forecast for its Model 3, it will hit the 200,000 vehicle limit in 2018, after which the phase-out begins. A year later, the subsidies are gone. Losing a $7,500 subsidy on a $35,000 car is a huge deal. No other EV manufacturer is anywhere near their 200,000 limit. Their customers are going to benefit from the subsidy; Tesla buyers won't.

This could crush Tesla sales. Many car buyers are sensitive to these subsidies. For example, after Hong Kong rescinded a tax break for EVs effective in April, Tesla sales in April dropped to zero. The good people of Hong Kong will likely start buying Teslas again, but it shows that subsidies have a devastating impact when they're pulled.

That's what Tesla is facing next year in the US.

In California, the largest EV market in the US, 2.7% of new vehicles sold in the first quarter were EVs, up from 0.4% in 2012, according to the California New Dealers Association. California is Tesla's largest market. Something big needs to be done to help the Bay Area company, which has lost money every single year of its ten years of existence. And taxpayers are going to be shanghaied into doing it.

To make this more palatable, you have to dress this up as something where others benefit too, though the biggest beneficiary would be Tesla because these California subsidies would replace the federal subsidies when they're phased out.

A 10-week cholera epidemic has now infected more than 300,000 people in Yemen, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday, a health disaster on top of war, economic collapse and near-famine in the impoverished country.

"Disturbing. We're at 300k+ suspected cases with ~7k new cases/day," ICRC regional director Robert Mardini said in a tweet.

The World Health Organization has said there were 297,438 suspected cases and 1,706 deaths by July 7, but it did not publish a daily update on Sunday, when the 300,000 mark looked set to be reached. A WHO spokesman said the figures were still being analyzed by Yemen's health ministry.

Although the daily growth rate in the overall number of cases has halved to just over 2 per cent in recent weeks and the spread of the disease has slowed in the worst-hit regions, outbreaks in other areas have grown rapidly.

Five people have been stricken with the rare, rodent-born hantavirus illness in Washington state since February, three of whom have died, in the state's worst outbreak of the disease in at last 18 years, public health officials reported on Thursday.

The three fatal cases also mark the highest death toll from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in Washington state during a single year since the respiratory ailment was first identified in the "Four Corners" region of the US Southwest in 1993.

The disease has been found to be transmitted to humans from deer mice, either through contact with urine, droppings, saliva or nesting materials of infected rodents or by inhaling dust contaminated with the virus.