■ A World War II veteran was able to hear a symphony he wrote 67 years ago for the first time, when the U.S. Army Orchestra premiered it in Washington, D.C. Retired Col. Harold Van Heuvelen, 93, was inspired by his experiences as a soldier to write a symphony in 1945, but it languished on the shelf for decades and […]
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Mysterious radio signals from space have been known to repeat, but for the first time, researchers have noticed a pattern in a series of bursts coming from a single source half a billion light-years from Earth. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are millisecond-long bursts of radio waves in space. Individual radio bursts emit once and don’t repeat. But repeating fast […]
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“This is the worst shelter she had ever seen,” Clare Forndran, media director for Dog Tales Rescue and Sanctuary. More than 250 dogs were squeezed into a space designed for about 70. “Dogs were literally fighting over a loaf of bread,” Forndran said. “There were more rats than dogs.” Eden couldn’t choose which dogs would have a chance at new […]
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If you go to the beach this summer you may come home with some bacteria from the water. Studies show that the water may be contaminated with all sorts of unsafe bacteria. Before rainwater can be absorbed by the ground or evaporated back into the air it travels down to the ocean waters through sewer pipes where it can pick […]
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Too much alone time can kill you. A study conducted by Brigham Young University found that isolation and loneliness are as bad for a person’s health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being an alcoholic. Researchers examined data from 35 years’ worth of studies on loneliness, and after accounting for participants’ socioeconomic status, age, gender, and pre-existing health conditions, […]
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A BBC poll surveyed more than 26,000 people around the world to rate their perception of 16 countries and the E.U. Here’s the ranking for nations viewed as “mainly positive.”
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Human beings appear to be genetically engineered to be happiest and healthiest when we spend a lot of time selflessly helping others—and unhealthy when we’re mostly devoted to self-gratification. That’s the eye-opening conclusion of University of North Carolina researchers, based on a study of 80 volunteers. The study subjects were asked how often they felt hedonic pleasure—the kind of happiness […]
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According to researchers the human remains found on an ancient shipwreck from 2100 years ago will shed some light on the past that was thought to be lost. The researchers found human remains off the Greek Island of Antikythera in the Aegean Sea and have been studying them at a site in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Because of the deaths they are […]
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■ Having been banned from every tanning salon in New Jersey, Patricia Krentcil — dubbed “a tanorexic” by the tabloids—plans to move to Britain to continue tanning. Krentcil, 44, says that since salons started turning her away she is having “to spend hours covering myself in tanning lotion to get the color I want.” She says that even though she’s […]
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How did the U.S. debt get so high? The crucial turning point came back in 2001, said Lori Montgomery. At the time, Uncle Sam was actually running surpluses, and “the outlook was so rosy” that forecasters were predicting the U.S. could pay back every dime it had ever borrowed. That’s when President George W. Bush made a pivotal decision: Rather […]
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