A Dementia Epidemic

Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia are afflicting far more Americans than ever before. An alarming new report by the Alzheimer’s Association shows that one in three seniors have dementia when they die, and deaths from the disease increased nearly 70 percent between 2000 and 2010. “It’s an epidemic, it’s on the rise, and currently there is no way to […]

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Our sun’s hotter sister

Stars are not born alone. Rather, they emerge from clouds of gas and dust in groups of up to 10,000, then slowly scatter through space. For the first time, astronomers have identified a star that came from the same solar nursery as our sun, some 4.5 billion years ago. This stellar relative—located 110 light-years away in the constellation Hercules—is hotter […]

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Losing control of our farmland

Rich foreign countries are buying up Thai farmland to ensure their own food supplies, said Sanitsuda Ekachai. An international nonprofit farmers’ rights group has documented “an alarming trend of governments and corporations buying up farmland on a large scale in more than 60 developing countries.” The rush began after the global food crisis of 2007-08, when rich countries realized they […]

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Resurrecting an ancient virus

French researchers have revived a dormant and previously unknown virus from a 30,000-year-old sample of Siberian permafrost. The pathogen poses no threat to humans, but its zombie-like return to an infectious state demonstrates the remarkable durability of microbes and raises the question of whether unknown, disease-causing viruses from some ancient era might be locked in ice. [This] is a good […]

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RETURN TO SENDER

Public urination is a problem in most major cities of the world, but now another town is using technology to “pee back” the perpetrators, so to speak. Authorities in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg, Germany, had the walls in this well-known red light district sprayed with a super-hydrophobic nano-coating which is so water repellent that, as tech website gizmag.com […]

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Lottery winners give back

■    A Missouri couple have used their record lottery winnings to improve their hometown. Mark and Cindy Hill have spent chunks of their $293 million fortune on the town of Camden Point buying it a new firehouse and baseball field, refurbishing the town’s waste-water system, and topping up the high school scholarship fund.The Hills’ gifts amounted to 25 years of […]

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