Little-known changes in the program will have a big effect on many people's retirement.
Also: 
Friday, June 3, 2011
Cities that are on the brink
These communities could take a hit because they lean so heavily on one employer or industry.
Also: On The Job
Surprisingly, having the right skills isn't the key to landing an offer, an expert says.
Also: Less Frustration and Lumen
The nearly impenetrable container known as the "clamshell" may become a thing of the past.
Also: 
With incandescent light bulbs being phased out, shoppers now have some choices to make.
Also: 
Culinary DeLites
There are cereal, pasta, and bread options that retain their nutritional value without losing flavor.
Also: 
Foods to boost brain power and Cereal's lost love
Foods high in iron and protein can help you stay alert, focused, and improve memory.
Also: 
Consumers are losing their taste for these six well-known breakfast brands.
Also: "Operation Cupcake"
A magazine's online bomb-making instructions are replaced by something different.
Also: Soldier fought off 30 Taliban
Under fire from all sides, a 31-year-old corporal realized he had nothing to lose by fighting back.
Also: Situation in Yemen degrades
President injured in rocket attack
James Arness dies at 88
The TV star leaves a touching note to fans of his hit western, which ran for 20 years.
Also: Banana Boat Song
Harry Belafonte sings the Banana Boat Song for the first time on TV ever and it's with the Muppets
Power of spirited kids' play
A spirited pillow fight or some energetic wrestling can help instill flexibility and joyfulness.
Also: High School prank could lead to felonies
Police in Nevada are searching for suspects after a huge sports rivalry goes too far.
Also: Is the Yellow Brick Road in Peekskill?
Mr. Curran believes the ordeal shaped the Wizard of Oz. “Whenever Baum had an emotional experience, such as his two years at Peekskill Military Academy, it showed up in the book,” Mr. Curran says during his Oz presentation at the museum. “Whenever the characters get off the yellow brick road, they get into trouble.”Only a small part of the road is still brick. Curran would like to restore the road, or build a monument of some sort to Oz, but the city does not have the money for such a project.
In 2005, a Fulbright scholar and artist persuaded John Testa, who was the mayor of Peekskill at the time, to conduct an authenticity study on the road. Mr. Curran uncovered maps showing that West Street, which leads from the steamboat dock up a hill to the military academy, was indeed made of Dutch pavers, a common yellow-hued brick in the Dutch-settled area.
The maps showed Mr. Baum had to have walked along the road to get to school, Mr. Curran said.
Scientists Create Tiny Artificial Brain
It’s not going to be beating anyone at Jeopardy any time soon, but scientists have created an artificial brain derived from rat cells. The brain is capable of 12 second short term memory and will be used to study how neural networks store data.
Developed by a team at the University of Pittsburgh, the brain was created in an attempt to artificially nurture a working brain into existence so that researchers could study neural networks and how our brains transmit electrical signals and store data so efficiently. The did so by attaching a layer of proteins to a silicon disk and adding brain cells from embryonic rats that attached themselves to the proteins and grew to connect with one another in the ring seen above.
Meteor puts on big show
NASA cameras catch a chunk of comet barreling through Earth's atmosphere at 86,000 miles per hour.
Also: 
Roman Ship Carried Live Fish Tank
Roman Ship Carried Live Fish Tank
How a Roman Ship Carried Live Fish
See how ancient Romans engineered an ancient pumping system to transport live fish at sea.
Animal News
Photo: hermanusbackpackers/Creative Commons
You'd think a bloody chunk of meat would do the trick, but no, sharks are more likely drawn to hard rock music. We also have oceans acidification making clownfish deaf, birds flying crazy long record-breaking flights, troubling news on the koala front, billions of bugs on car bumpers, ancient tortoises in love, and more in the Week in Animal News.
Article continues: The Week in Animal News: Sharks Like AC/DC, Clownfish Going Deaf, and More
A cage-diving operator in Australia finds that sharks in his region are drawn to a certain type of music.
Also: Dinosaur Sex and Mammoth Crossings
How to Tell Male, Female Dinosaurs Apart
Hybrid Mammoth DNA Found
Woolly mammoths may have interbred with other ancient elephants that crossed their paths.
Gynandromorph and 'Mephisto'
A Gender-bender Colored Cardinal
Deepest-Dwelling Creature Could Be 'Mephisto'
If you were to dig down about 2.2 miles, you might encounter this creature and its other nematode relatives. Read more
Cat's Hugs and the Cute Factor
What's Really Happening in the Kitten Hugging Video?
Humans and cats both have certain muscles that are for precision, as well as what are called larger “anti-gravity muscles” like those that lift your legs. Those larger ones are activated by a neurochemical called serotonin. During REM sleep, the brain’s serotonin system is shut off, which means the anti-gravity muscles are shut off. What’s not switched off are these highly-tuned muscles in things like eyes and extremities—what for us would be fingers and toes, but for them it’s paws and whiskers. This kitten is in the state of sleep some people call “the sleep of the body,” because the body is totally relaxed except for these tips of things twitching, while the brain is active and dreaming.Dr. Dodman has plenty more to tell us about the cat and kitten, at NatGeo Daily News.
Upping the cute factor
Pit Bulls and Friends
A series of vintage images reveals the infamous breed's domestic role.
Also: Friends
Animals and more animals
Animals Crossing The Road
image credit
We all know why the chicken crossed the road. As Aristotle already discovered: To actualize its potential. But it's not just chickens that cross the road. Other animals also do it. Here's a site with pictures of all sorts of animals crossing the road.
Also:
Of Mice and Pigs:
Plague Threatens Australian Livestock
Since he first saw them dining out on his prized stock he has been at his wit’s end about how to get rid of them, the (Adelaide) Sunday Mail reported.Mouse bait isn’t cheap, though, so farmers are utilizing homemade methods of pest control; aside from rubbing his pigs in engine oil, Gregory mixes confectioner’s sugar with cement. “The icing sugar attracts the mice, they eat it and then the cement clogs them up.”
Now, as a desperate last resort, he is covering his pigs at a farm property in Wynarka, 80 miles (130km) east of state capital Adelaide, in engine oil to protect them from the mice — with the rodents apparently turned off by the taste.
“The mouse problem got really bad in April,” the 50-year-old father of four said.
“We went away in the school holidays and when we came back we drove up the driveway and it looked like the ground was moving — there were hundreds of thousands of them.”
Turkey - Deer
Troubled turkey chases buses
For the past year and a half a turkey has showed up at a bus stop in Charlotte, North Carolina and chased buses. Now people there are starting to wonder why. Some residents simply believe the turkey just does not like the bus. However, others have a much more romantic theory.
"He did have a mate and she just kind of disappeared," said one resident.
"So we thought that one morning she hopped on the bus. And he's been waiting for her ever since."
Also:
Deer runs in and out of bank
A deer ran into a bank at the Suntrust Building in downtown Roanoke, Virginia on Tuesday. And then it ran out again
Moles and Cicadas
What Made this Marking in the Sand?
It was a golden mole, which can be found in the desert of Sperrgebiet National Park, Namibia. It survives the heat by tunneling around just under the surface of the sand.Here's a video of one being captured and examined by researchers.
Speaking of burying themselves ...
13 year cicadas return with ear-piercing vengeance
I don’t know how they are in your area, but they’re plentiful here and oh so annoying. They’ll be around for a couple of weeks. Here’s a local television stations report.Carnivorous Snails and the Invasion
Giant Carnivorous Hermaphrodite Snails
“Powelliphanta are one of our most amazing native invertebrates,” DOC ranger Mark Melville told The Dominion Post. “They are carnivores, giants of the snail world. They can live up to 20 years and they lay eggs that look like small birds’ eggs.”The species has been victim to endangered habitat and natural enemies, but the conservation efforts in areas like Hawke’s Bay are proving beneficial.
The snails dwell on damp forest floors and forage for food at night. They mainly prey on earthworms but are also known to eat slugs, using a row of sharp, backward-facing teeth to grab their prey before devouring it using digestive enzymes.
Like some other land and freshwater snail species, powelliphanta snails are hermaphrodites. This means that any adult can mate with any other adult because both female and male sexual organs are present in each snail.
Also:
Making the Best of Invasive Species
Take the Asian carp (please!). Imported from China in 1973 to clean algae from Southern ponds, the carp soon broke from their confines and infested Mississippi River waterways. Gobbling up the phytoplankton that support native species, the carp can grow four feet long and weigh 100 pounds. They continue to swim north and could establish themselves in the Great Lakes, the world’s largest freshwater system, and decimate native fish populations there.Smithsonian looks at several programs designed to get people to consume more invasive species as a way to either control them or make the best of a bad situation.
Wildlife managers have tried to prevent Asian carp and other invasive species from reaching the Great Lakes by installing electric underwater fences and, occasionally, poisoning the water. But chefs from New Orleans to Chicago have also tried to put a dent in the population by putting the fish on their menu. Now, a researcher at the Aquaculture Research Center at Kentucky State University is trying to figure out how to harvest and promote carp as a food source. Currently, a few processing plants are converting Asian carp into ingredients for fertilizer or pet food. “That’s a shame, because the meat quality is excellent,” says Siddhartha Disgupta, an associate professor at the center.
Disgupta argues that the carp has all the health benefits associated with eating fish and, since it eats low on the food chain, has few contaminants such as mercury that tend to be concentrated in the flesh of other fish species. He says he’s eaten Asian carp in various preparations and found it delicious.
Animal Babies
Ninety-year-old Galapagos Tortoise becomes mother for first time
T3, the Galapagos tortoise is basking in the glow of being a first-time mother - at the age of 90.
The two possible fathers at Dubbo Western Plains Zoo in Australia are aged just 40 and 41.
T3's baby, named NJ was born in early March but the zoo won't know its gender for five years.
It will take NJ that long to reach just 30cm and decades more before achieving an adult size of around 300kg.
Also:
King Penguin Crèche -
The Biggest Day Care Facility On The Planet
If you have children you will no doubt have experienced the heart stopping moment when you realize the little one has wandered off and you cannot see them anywhere. You might imagine, then, how the average King Penguin parent might feel when they return to feed their chick.
In what has to be the biggest day care facility on Earth, thousands upon thousands of king penguins group their offspring together in an attempt to stop them dying in the sub-zero temperatures of South Georgia. They are also better protected from predators in this huge gathering.
Of Elephants and Lobsters
Queenie also played the harmonica and performed at fairs and circuses around the U.S.
Also: Rare Electric-Blue Lobster
Only one in four million lobsters is blue, a genetic mutation in coloring that makes for an interesting-looking creature. This blue lobster was caught Wednesday off the shores of Prince Edward Island, the only one since 2009. Blair Doucette, the fisherman who nabbed the beauty, says he has never caught a blue lobster in his 30 years of fishing. He is considering donating the lobster to a local aquarium.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
