A huge virus discovered in sediment on the Chilean coast and another in an Australian pond are not only the largest scientists have ever seen, but also among the most baffling. A single so-called pandora virus is 1,000 times the size of the influenza virus and holds 2,556 genes, compared with the flu’s 13. Only 6 percent of its genes […]
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■ Griffin Furlong has been fighting an uphill battle, but this week the 18-year-old graduated as ”class valedictorian” after his mother to leukemia when he was 6, Furlong spent two years in a homeless shelter with his father and brother. “It was horrible,” he said. “A kid should not have to go through that.” A month ago, just before final […]
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If thinking about your own death freaks you out, there may be over-the-counter solution. A new study shows that the main ingredient in Tylenol, acetaminophen, can help calm existential dread in the same way it reduces the physical pain of a headache. To get volunteers worried about their own mortality, University of British Columbia researchers asked them to watch scenes […]
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■ A Canadian man was scratching his back when he noticed a pointy protrusion. It turned out to be a 3-inch knife blade that was buried in his flesh three years earlier. Billy McNeely, 32, said he’d often complained to doctors about chronic back pain after he was stabbed in a 2010 brawl, but physicians told him it was just […]
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