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On the evening of Wednesday, March 21, a mouse scurried into a storm drain near the southeast corner of Central Park in New York City. If anyone noticed the mouse at all, whatever shallow impression the sight of a Manhattan rodent made on their minds likely vanished within seconds, rinsed away by a new wave of sensory experience an approaching car, a ringing cell phone. But the mouse, whose name is Gerald, is worth remembering

With each successive year, Asia Week New York grows bigger and better. In 2012, no fewer than five auction houses will offer relevant sales of artworks and artifacts from China, Korea, Japan, India, and Southeast Asia, and 17 museums and other institutions will offer special programming

A week-long vampire convention on a cruise ship that will feature a vampire ball and costume contest is planned for scenic Southeast Alaska next summer.

For Douglas Meffert, those attempting to harness the water power of the Mississippi River aren't just scientists and engineers; they're visionaries who could transform the way power grids operate in the Southeast, and perhaps other areas of the United States. Meffert, a professor of bioenvironmental research at Tulane University, said that with his work, he's carrying on the mission of the late professor William Mouton, a revered New Orleans structural engineer, to end the southeastern United States' reliance on fossil-fuel energy from the Gulf of Mexico.

Here's one advantage to armadillos' steady northward march across the Southeast United States: They're awfully handy to have as bait if, say, you're a wildlife biologist looking to trap an alligator that has inexplicably settled into your local pond in north Georgia. [More]

The picture of Southeast Asia's deforestation is coming into greater focus. Scientists have developed a new satellite-imaging technique that allows them to have a better bird's eye view of when carbon-rich peatlands were cleared and to what extent they have been replaced by palm oil trees. [More]