■ Griffin Furlong has been fighting an uphill battle, but this week the 18-year-old graduated as ”class valedictorian” after his mother to leukemia when he was 6, Furlong spent two years in a homeless shelter with his father and brother. “It was horrible,” he said. “A kid should not have to go through that.” A month ago, just before final […]
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■ A high school baseball team in Sacramento was practicing last week when they heard desperate cries for help. A teenage girl had been pinned underneath a car in the Valley High School parking lot. Without prompting, the 30-strong team quickly lifter the four-door sedan off the injured girl, allowing coaches Troy Quirillo and Brett Sawyer to pull her to […]
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As an evolutionary strategy, the evolutionary roots of monogamy have long puzzled scientists: When a male pairs off for life with one female, he limits how many offspring he can produce, thus reducing his chances to pass on his genes. Few species are monogamous, yet 5 percent of mammal species are, including wolves and beavers—and about a quarter of primates. […]
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As humans get older, our brains shrink by about 15 percent, making us vulnerable to memory loss, dementia, and depression. But the brains of our closest relatives, chimpanzees, stay the same size throughout life, a new study has found. And while 50 percent of Americans over 85 suffer from Alzheimer’s, elderly chimps appear to have no similar problems. “The million […]
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If thinking about your own death freaks you out, there may be over-the-counter solution. A new study shows that the main ingredient in Tylenol, acetaminophen, can help calm existential dread in the same way it reduces the physical pain of a headache. To get volunteers worried about their own mortality, University of British Columbia researchers asked them to watch scenes […]
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■ The 15-year-old son of an accused mugger met this week with his father’s alleged victim to make amends. Christian Lunsford sought out Tona Herndon—who had her purse snatched while visiting her late husband’s gravesite in Bethany, Okla.—after learning that his father, Shane, had been arrested for the crime. The teenager met with Herndon to apologize and give back $250 […]
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You won’t believe what actually controls the Internet… The entire internet is controlled by seven actual, physical keys. Four times a year since 2010, a highly secure ritual known as a key ceremony takes place that involves 14 people, 7 keys, and the secret information about what actually controls the Internet. The people conducting the ceremony are part of an […]
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Astronomers have discovered two clouds of gas some 12 billion light-years away that appear to preserve the primordial conditions of the universe in the minutes after the big bang. The clouds contain just hydrogen and its isotope deuterium, making them “the first examples to fit precisely” into what scientists think the early universe was like, University of California astronomer Jason […]
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Having a sense of purpose may add years to your life—and the benefit can be realized throughout adulthood. That’s the conclusion of a long-term study that tracked the physical and mental health of more than 6,100 Americans aged 20 to 75. Previous research has shown purposefulness to be one of the strongest predictors of longevity, but this is the first […]
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Anatoli Brouchkov, a scientist whose curiosity and thirst for knowledge drove him to go beyond the standard protocol of his experimentation by injecting himself with an ancient “Eternal Life” bacteria. In 2009, a 3.5-million-year-old bacteria strain called Bacillus F was discovered deep in the permafrost of Siberia’s Sakha Republic. Scientists later found that mice and fruit flies exposed to the bacteria seemed to […]
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