■ A cat that ran for the U.S. Senate in Virginia received about 7,000 write-in votes in last week’s election, according to his owners. That means Hank, who hails from Springfield, Va., can claim third place behind Democratic victor Tim Kaine and Republican also-ran George Allen.The human candidates were separated by 180,000 votes, which means that Hank did not affect […]
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Colony collapse disorder, the mysterious scourge that has been killing off honeybees since 2005, has suddenly become a lot more deadly. This past winter, as many as half of all hives succumbed to the disorder—up from one third annually in recent years, and between 5 and 10 percent when hives were healthy. “It is a catastrophe in progress,” beekeeper Steve […]
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Rio De Janeiro No rain forest beef: Hoping to prevent Amazon deforestation, Brazilian grocery stores say they will no longer sell beef from cattle raised on land clear-cut from the rain forests. Brazil is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of beef, and an area of the Amazon larger than France has been cleared to create pastureland for […]
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The more ziplining becomes popular the more injuries are soaring. A study shows that the rise between 2009 and 2012 rose about 50% where kids under the age of 9 rose about 45% of that number. Most of the injuries were broken bones, fractures and about 10% of the injured needed to be hospitalized. Most of the injuries occurred by […]
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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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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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A black hole when found in the center of the Milky Way would appear to be 10 times brighter than our full moon. Scientists estimate that its light would have formed about 12 billion years ago and would have measured about as big as 20 billion suns. The energy that comes from a black hole is mostly ultraviolet light. Astronomers […]
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Tired of exercising to shed excess pounds? Scientists at Harvard University may have discovered a way to help you lose weight—just by taking a pill. The human body has two kinds of fat cells: white cells, which store excess calories in the form of flab, and brown cells, which burn energy to produce heat. “What we wanted to do is […]
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Chimpanzees, our closest relatives, turn a blind eye to crimes that don’t affect them directly, suggesting that third-party punishment— the foundation of complex societies governed by laws s and courts—is a uniquely human development. German researchers trained chimpanzees to 1 play one of three roles while facing one another in cages: One was given access to food within reach of […]
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They’ve left no notes behind. And it’s fairly certain they’re not doing it for the insurance money. But “suicidal deer” are apparently such a big problem in Paxton, Ill. that its county is installing signs to warn drivers. Calling the deer “suicidal,” of course, may be something of a misnomer. More likely, they just don’t know to be cautious around […]
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