Scientists say there may be a ninth planet out past Pluto at 8 billion miles from the sun. Since its not within the gravitational pull of three of the big planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune it may go out as far as 200 billion miles away from the sun in the future. This giant planet may be 10 times […]
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Taro Aso, Japanese Finance Minister and former Prime Minister, bemoaning the financial burden that caring for the elderly in their final years places on the country’s budget. Over a quarter of Japan’s 128 million people are above the age of 60—including Aso, who is 72.
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Beijing The cloud of pollution over Beijing grew so dense this week that much of the city was rendered invisible. Hundreds of flights were grounded, auto traffic was stalled for scores of miles, and residents rushed to buy masks and air filters. Chinese officials downplayed the air-quality crisis, as usual, saying their readings showed that air pollution was “moderate.” But […]
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A study was conducted with couples to see the effect of touch on how they reacted to pain. They were either touching hands, sitting next to each other and not touching, or separated into different rooms. The couples that were holding hands found that when subjected to slight pain they were able to relax better than the ones that were […]
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French researchers have revived a dormant and previously unknown virus from a 30,000-year-old sample of Siberian permafrost. The pathogen poses no threat to humans, but its zombie-like return to an infectious state demonstrates the remarkable durability of microbes and raises the question of whether unknown, disease-causing viruses from some ancient era might be locked in ice. [This] is a good […]
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New York University Langone School of Medicine have discovered what might possibly be an unknown organ that lines the digestive, respiratory, and urinary tracts. This organ may be helping in the transportation of cancer cells around the body. They discovered this by the use of routine endoscopic procedures where they can enter the patient’s stomach and take a look at […]
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Babies exposed to air pollution in the womb are more likely to have autism than those whose mothers spend pregnancy in clean air, according to a new study. In the largest study of its kind, UCLA researchers compared levels of air pollutants, mostly related to vehicle traffic, during pregnancy gestation periods of 7,603 children with autism and 75,635 children without […]
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Khafji, Saudi Arabia Christian roundup: Saudi authorities last week arrested an entire congregation of Christians worshipping in a private home. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Saudi Arabia’s morality police, detained 28 men and women in the home of an Indian national and seized copies of the Bible. The prisoners’ fate is unknown. Saudi Arabia […]
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A hallucinatory party drug could point the way to the first new treatments for depression in a generation. Scientists have discovered that ketamine (“Special K”), which club-goers take for dream-like highs, also improves mood disorders by repairing damaged connections in the brain. What’s more, ketamine works within hours as opposed to weeks— even for people whose mood disorders have proved […]
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Bulgarians hate old people, said Ruslan Jordanov. I’m not kidding. In a recent survey, 58 percent of Bulgarians surveyed admitted to disliking the elderly, making them even more reviled than the Roma—quite a feat in Bulgaria. No wonder “nobody ever gets up to give them a seat on the tram.” Long ago, our society revered grandparents as fonts of wisdom. […]
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