Study: Painkillers Dull Pleasure

Every week, more than 50 million Americans take acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol and many other popular painkillers, to ease their aches and pains. But a new study has revealed that the drug also dulls emotions—including happiness. Prior research showed that acetaminophen can help take the sting out of negative feelings like dread, but the new findings from Ohio […]

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Frozen oil shows promise of shape-shifting materials

Researchers have identified a new mechanism that drives the development of form and structure, through the observation of artificial materials that shape-shift through a wide variety of forms which are as complex as those seen in nature. It’s curious to observe such life-like behavior in a non-living thing – in many cases, artificial objects can look more ‘alive’ than living […]

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Most of us are parking the wrong way

AAA says more than 76 percent of U.S. drivers are parking the wrong way. “U.S. drivers most frequently park their vehicle by pulling forward into a parking spot … a riskier practice that driving experts warn leaves pedestrians more vulnerable.” So it seems, we should really be backing into parking spots instead of pulling in head first. As part of a […]

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What it means to be a brother

jimmy carter brother

The birth order of brothers, says George Howe Colt, is just one of the things that cause them to be so different.   History is full of brothers so different that it seems impossible they could have the same parents. A brief sampling through the ages might include the Arouets (Armand was a sanctimonious, evangelical Catholic; his younger brother Frangois-Marie, […]

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The peril of domestic drones

Drone warfare is now coming to your own backyard, said Glenn Greenwald. Local police have begun using unmanned Predator drones like those used in Afghanistan and Pakistan to conduct surveillance of criminal suspects right here in the U.S. This chilling step toward “a Surveillance State”—without the public’s knowledge or consent— was revealed last week by the Los Angeles Times, which […]

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Earth’s bigger, older cousins

Astronomers have discovered the larg­est rocky planet yet, and its existence has profound implications for our understanding of the early universe and the potential for extraterrestrial life. Kepler-10c, which was spotted by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, has a diameter of roughly 18,000 miles—more than twice that of Earth —prompting scientists to create a new class of planets, dubbed “mega-Earths.”The body’s […]

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Coffee limits liver damage

Drinking three or more alcoholic beverages per day increases the likelihood of developing liver cancer, but research now suggests that drinking coffee may help offset that risk. In an ongoing analysis of cancer rates, scientists from the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) looked at data from 34 previous studies involving 8 million adults, including 24,600 diagnosed with liver cancer. They […]

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Violent movies: Do they inspire madmen?

One violent movie does not a mass killer make, said Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. But the pornographic violence that now fills popular films has “the cumulative power to desensitize and destabilize” impressionable minds. Disturbed young men like James Holmes, the accused Aurora, Colo., killer, may be unable to process the nihilistic, sadistically violent world of movies like […]

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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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