At one point, KFC was one of the greatest fast-service chicken franchises in the world. Then, a series of advertising missteps—like a rapping Colonel Sanders—and competition from upstart chains like Chick-fil-A knocked it off its perch.

The company has managed to turn its ailing fortunes around over the past year by enlisting a succession of actors—including Norm Macdonald and George Hamilton—to portray the Colonel and retraining employees on proper methods of food preparation. There’s also an ambitious plan to remodel 70 percent of its 3000-plus U.S. restaurants over the next three years. But the core of its appeal remains chicken, and the brand is hoping it can reinvent its menu thanks to additions like the Chizza.

A mash-up of chicken and pizza, the Chizza is a breaded chicken breast slathered in marinara sauce, cheese, pepperoni, and peppers. The result is probably something close to a chicken parm dish without the pasta, though we’ll probably have to wait for international food bloggers to weigh in. The Chizza is currently only available in the Philippines and India, with Japan expected to launch the item November 1.

[h/t Geek]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

Singapore is poised to launch the world’s largest floating solar panel system by the end of the year, Inhabitat reports via ChannelNews Asia. Phase one of the photovoltaic test bed includes 10 different systems floating in the Tengeh Reservoir in western Singapore, due to be operational in the next few months, according to a speech given by Masagos Zulkifli, Singapore’s environmental minister, at the Asia Clean Energy Summit.

The pilot project will test not only the energy efficiency of the panels, but the environmental impact on the ecosystem below, since the system will block out light over that stretch of water. It will also reduce water evaporation from the reservoir to some extent, which might change the efficiency of the solar panels by cooling them down.

By the end of the year, it should be powering part of the national energy grid—three years after the project was originally due to go online. After the six-month pilot, ChannelNews Asia reports, two of the different photovoltaic systems will be tested on a larger scale. The first phase systems will continue to be operational for three to six years, though, along with the phase two systems.

Singapore is considered a model for green initiatives in Asia, especially with regard to environmentally friendly buildings. However, while the new floating solar panel testing is the largest pilot in the world, it’s not the first. Similar projects already exist in Australia, India, and the U.S., and Japan is poised to install a record 50,904 panels over a reservoir within two years. But the floating systems are especially relevant to Singapore, a geographically small city-state surrounded by water.

“Given our geography, solar photovoltaic (PV) systems are a key technology in Singapore’s efforts to harness renewable energy,” Zulkifli said in his speech on October 25. “Floating PV systems, i.e. those installed over our water bodies, not only help to overcome land constraints, but also have the potential to reduce evaporative losses from our reservoirs.”

[h/t Inhabitat]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

The global spread of AIDS was one of the greatest public health crises of the last century. While we’ve made tremendous advances in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention and treatment, the details of the virus’s global spread have been harder to pin down. A new report published this week in Nature sheds light on when and where HIV arrived in the United States: in New York City around 1970. It also removes blame from the man long known as “Patient Zero”—he was not, in fact, the first person in North America to contract the virus.

Because HIV attacks the immune system, limiting the body’s ability to fight infections or infection-related cancers, the first patients presented with a range of symptoms, from enlarged lymph nodes and pneumonia to cancer. Physicians in California first recognized it as a single entity in 1981, but the disease didn’t get a name—acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)—until a year later. By then, media reports of a “gay cancer” had begun to raise alarms and stigma across the country. The first drugs to treat HIV were not approved until 1987, by which time the disease had taken more than 40,000 lives.

Part of the problem lay in the limitations of medical and scientific technology. We didn’t have the capability to look inside the disease with the level of detail required to stop it. Blood tests could pick up on the presence of HIV in a sample, but they couldn’t spell out its genetic code. To do that, said study co-author and virus evolution expert Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, researchers would need a sample of RNA from the virus itself—a serious challenge, as the virus’s RNA is super delicate and breaks down at the slightest provocation.

But we’ve come a long way since then. Worobey and his colleagues in Arizona and at the University of Cambridge have created a vividly named new technique called RNA jackhammering that allows them to break down the human genes in a blood sample and extract and examine the virus RNA hiding within them.

To rewind the clock to HIV’s early days in the States, the researchers applied their jackhammers to blood samples taken from more than 2000 men in New York and San Francisco in 1978 and 1979. The nearly 40-year-old samples had degraded since their collection, but Worobey and his colleagues were still able to extract eight near-complete HIV RNA sequences, creating the oldest-known record of North American HIV genetics.

By comparing these sequences with those collected from other parts of the globe, the researchers were able to trace the virus’s evolution and devastating spread. They found that HIV had crossed from Africa to the Caribbean, and from there jumped to New York City and then San Francisco, where the first patients were identified. These findings run counter to earlier theories, which pinpointed the virus’s U.S. landfall to San Francisco.

The density of vulnerable populations in New York City were like “dry tinder” for HIV, Worobey said in a press statement, “causing the epidemic to burn hotter and faster and infecting enough people that it grabs the world’s attention for the first time.”

By the time the blood samples were collected, the authors say, the virus had already evolved into the form it bears today.

Their analysis also upends another well-known element of the AIDS story: the identity of “Patient Zero.” For nearly three decades, scientists have traced the virus’s entry to the U.S. back to one man: Gaëtan Dugas. But Worobey and his colleagues tested a sample of Dugas’s blood from 1983 and found that the virus RNA in his blood was no less evolved—and therefore no older—than the viral genes in his peers. He wasn’t Patient Zero.

That the weight of the AIDS pandemic ever came to be placed on Dugas’s shoulders at all may itself have been a simple typographical error, the authors write. The man’s original file identified him as a patient from Outside of California, or Patient O. Somewhere along the way, the letter O became a zero, a mistake that would be perpetuated for decades—long after Dugas himself had died.

The authors are hopeful that their findings and their new technique will help accelerate scientific unraveling of the virus.

“Earlier detection and better alignment of the various options we have to make it harder for the virus to move from one person to the next,” Worobey said, “are key to driving HIV out of business.”
 

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com. 

When searching for a new job, there are many factors to consider: How are the benefits? Is the office culture a good fit? And most importantly, does it pay well? As for that last question, straight salaries aren’t the only numbers you should be looking at. It’s also important to weigh a job’s potential for wage growth over time.

To that end, Glassdoor recently calculated the 13 jobs that saw the biggest increases in median base pay between June 2015 and June 2016. Positions in marketing, healthcare, and sales all saw above-average salary raises over the past year. The job that received the biggest boost was certified nursing assistant. The median starting pay rose to $50,000 in 2016 from $45,000 in 2015—a jump of 11 percent compared to last year’s national average of 2.5 percent.

Sales managers saw similar growth with an 11 percent uptick from $66,040 in 2015 to $73,000 in 2016. Behind them, implementation consultant salaries rose from $70,000 to $75,000 and recruiters’ salaries rose from $42,000 to $45,000. Other jobs that broke the top 10 included registered nurse, media planner, data analyst, and admissions representative.

Of course, overall averages like these don’t apply to every part of the country. If room for growth is a top priority on your on job hunt, it’s also worth looking at the individual economies of your city and state.

[h/t Glassdoor]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.