Why is America a nation of growing inequality? The yawning economic and cultural gap between the well-to-do and the working class—now wider than at almost any point in our history—has academics and pundits searching for explanations. Now, a new Harvard study provides an illuminating—and “horrifying”—insight into what’s going on. The affluent and the working classes, the study found, are raising […]
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The Japanese whaling fleet is reportedly heading into the seas around Antarctica, drawing widespread condemnation from campaigners. Japan’s fleet of six ships left the port of Shimonoseki, western Japan with a quota of 940 minke whales and 10 fin whales. Calls for the Australian government to intervene have been rejected by the environment minister, Senator Ian Campbell. Japan’s whaling program, […]
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For the first time, a mission designed to set its eyes on black holes and other objects far from our solar system has turned its gaze back closer to home, capturing images of our sun. NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has taken its first picture of the sun, producing the most sensitive solar portrait ever taken in high-energy […]
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Colossal volcanic eruptions some 250 million years ago have long been linked to the widespread global extinction known as the “Great Dying“, a 60,000-year period that saw 90 percent of all sea creatures and more than two-thirds of all plants and animals on land die off. But new research has for the first time identified the specific cause of the […]
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10 myths about global warming, and what the science really says. THE REASONS FOR raising doubts about the human causes of global warming, explains Skeptical Sciences John Cook, are often political rather than scientific. Cook hears from climate change skeptics that ‘“its all a liberal plot to spread socialism and destroy capitalism. However, what is causing global warming is a […]
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The Southwest and central Great Plains are likely to be hit in coming decades by the most prolonged megadrought in more than 1,000 years, a new climate study predicts. Scientists from NASA, Columbia University, and Cornell University created a long-term climate model after analyzing historical temperature records, carbon dioxide emissions, and drought trends from tree rings.The record shows that the […]
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Imagine waking up to your worst fear…. A spider in your bed!!! Well, residents in Memphis, Tenn. woke up this week to MILLIONS of them. In fact the entire town of Memphis, TN has been overrun by the 8-legged invaders. A spider apocalypse, if you will. Millions of little spiders have infested the yards of the city Some of the […]
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Luckily for most of the U.S., the likelihood this eruption would happen is pretty low: about one in 100,000 any given year. If it did happen, it would be pretty devastating, though. “Thinking about a Yellowstone super eruption is like imagining a large asteroid hitting the Earth,” says Jacob Lowenstern, a research geologist with the USGS and Scientist-in-Charge of […]
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Neanderthals, a sturdy hominid species closely related to Homo sapiens, lived in Europe for about 270,000 years until humans arrived on the continent, about 30,000 years ago, at which point they quickly disappeared. The latest theory for their puzzling extinction is that humans exterminated, and maybe even ate, their Neanderthal cousins. French anthropologist Fernando that the bacterial disease was present […]
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A new NASA study on the Antarctic Ice Sheet says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers. The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that […]
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