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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Residents of shorelines previously damaged by Hurricane Sandy turned to a cheap and plentiful resource to help them rebuild: discarded Christmas trees. The storm washed away miles of sand dunes, which protected the coast from flooding by serving as a buffer against wind and waves. Volunteers in New York and New Jersey piled thousands of the trees on top of […]
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A special-needs student scored a touchdown with his high school football team last month, after the team’s coach put him in for the final play of the game. Noah VanVooren, who has Down syndrome, usually acts as a manager for the Little Chute High School team in Wisconsin. But Little Chute and rival Clintonville invited him to take the field […]
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The white cliffs of Dover located on the southeastern coast of England, are composed of a variety of calcite shells, including single-celled plants called coccolithophores (a type of algae) that formed on the seafloor. The conditions in the ocean were perfect to form these coccolithophores because the nitrite levels, low silicate concentrations, and the right amount of iron enabled them […]
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Scientists have long laughed at astrology’s underlying premise—that celestial events can influence human emotions and behavior. But a series of new studies has produced evidence that at least one kind of astronomical event—solar flares—may, in fact, affect human beings. Periodically, the sun erupts with large storms that hurl waves of electromagnetically charged particles into space, altering Earth’s own magnetic field. […]
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■ A star college athlete has turned down a chance at sporting glory to donate bone marrow to a stranger. Cameron Lyle, a shot-putter at the University of New Hampshire, added his DNA to the federal bone marrow registry two years ago and promptly forgot about it. But this month, he discovered his marrow matched that of a 28-year-old leukemia […]
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On a tour of Noura Lifschitz’s home in Tel Aviv, you’ll find some unexpected guests hanging out. Lifschitz opened her home to some 70 injured fruit bats and created a shelter where she and volunteers help nurse them back to health and release them back into the wild. Source: Reuters
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■ Brazilian taxi driver Adilson Luiz da Cruz often finds lost phones and forgotten umbrellas in his cab, but last week he hit the jackpot: 40 tickets to the World Cup. Despite his lifelong dream of going to the tournament, plus the thousands of dollars he could have earned by scalping the tickets, the cabbie didn’t hesitate to do the […]
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■ Cara Jumper, 10, expected a fun day with her grandpa at the family fishing hole in South Carolina. But when Coy Jumper suffered a stroke and fell into deep water, the petite girl found herself leaping to his rescue and saving him from drowning. Cara then had to drag her 230-pound grandfather a quarter mile through the woods, get […]
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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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