As diabetes rates rise worldwide, so does the illegal trade in human kidneys.The World Health Organization estimates that 10,000 black-market operations a year are being performed in places like China, Pakistan, and India, as doctors transplant kidneys purchased from poor donors for as little as $5,000 into richer patients paying up to $200,000.
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If nightmares about Jaws are keeping you from taking a dip in the ocean, relax. You’re much less appetizing than you think. 11: U.S. fatalities from sharks, 1990-2006 16: U.S. fatalities from collapsing sand holes, 1990-2006 1 in 310,733: Odds of dying in a fireworks accident 1 in 3,750,000: Odds of dying in a shark attack 80: Total unprovoked shark attacks around the world in 2012 30 Million: Sharks killed by people each year 219: Estimated […]
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On the 35th anniversary of its launch, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is close to becoming the first man-made object to escape our solar system. The spacecraft—run by a 1977 computer 100,000 times less powerful than an iPod Nano—is currently 11.3 billion miles away. In 2004, Voyager 1 entered the turbulent boundary zone beyond Pluto, where solar winds encounter plasma pushing […]
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Representatives from eight rural Colorado counties began making plans to form a breakaway state, North Colorado, to escape the state’s gun-control laws and oil-industry regulations. “This is not a stunt,” said Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway. “Our very way of life is under attack.”
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It turns out that there’s strong evidence to suggest that at least one kind of dolphin sound, studied extensively over the past decade, does function as a kind of referential symbol. Dolphins use distinct “signature whistles” to identify and call to one another. Each dolphin is thought to invent a unique name for itself as a calf and to keep […]
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As the population ages and lives longer, dementia has become one of the country’s most expensive medical conditions, with $109 billion in direct medical costs in 2010, a new RAND study found. The medical cost of dementia exceeds that of both heart disease, at $102 billion, and cancer, at $72 billion.
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Yearly odds of a U.S. student being killed at school: 1 in 3 million
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The sicker the oceans get, the more of their habitable regions vanish. Loss of aquatic habitats is mirroring the earlier pattern on land, which began with the Industrial Revolution and continues today.
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Percentage of American 16- and 17- year-olds who use text messaging who say they do so while driving: 34 Percentage of adults who do: 47
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Percentage of Americans and Chinese, respectively, who believe their government is “on the side of average citizens”: 12, 80 Who believe their government is “on the side of corporations”: 73, 17
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