On any given day, nearly 23 percent of all young Black men ages 16 to 24 who have dropped out of high school are in jail, prison, or a juvenile justice institution in America, according to a disturbing new national report released today on the dire economic and social consequences of not graduating from high [...]

NASA is planning to drop a spent rocket motor into the Cabeus crater on the moon Friday morning as part of the search to find lunar water. The motor is a leftover piece of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite that includes a “shepherding spacecraft” that will follow behind the rocket motor before it [...]

Image: Mohd Abubakr
The modern periodic table of elements has been attributed to Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, which he published in 1869. Pictured above is a proposed alternative that is shaped like a circle in order to arrange atoms by relative size:
According to Mohd Abubakr from Microsoft Research in Hyderabad, the table can be improved by [...]

Dr. Ben Wang shows a model of an ‘unmanned aerial vehicle’
Nanotechnology has surprising applications in mundane materials like sunscreen and esoteric items like high-tech body armor for soldiers. But some fear scarier scenarios worthy of a science fiction novel.  At Florida State University, engineers are creating new body armor for American troops. It’s more durable, [...]

Behold this graphic but compelling footage of the first ever elephant birth filmed in Bali, Indonesia.

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme!!!

Katherine Harmon writes in Scientific American that pharmacology researchers are developing a drug that could diminish the pleasurable effects of cocaine. Taking the drug might help addicts detoxify with greater success:
The vaccine itself does not destroy cocaine molecules, rather it induces antibodies that bind to it, making the opiate lose its ability to [...]

GOOD’s executive compensation infographic shows the compensation levels of the business world’s top execs, with the number of minimum wage earners each super-suit’s take-home pay would support. Wow that is a lot of capitalistic greed!

You can buy “The Lost Symbol,” by Dan Brown, as an e-book for $9.99 at Amazon.com.  Or you can don a pirate’s cap and snatch a free copy from another online user at RapidShare, Megaupload, Hotfile and other file-storage sites.
 

High doses of aspirin were used to treat patients during the 1918-1919 pandemic
The high death toll during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic might be attributed to the misuse of aspirin, says an article.
Aspirin (Getty Images)
Published in the online edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases, the article sounds a cautionary note at a time when health experts are [...]

American mega megacorp Cargill, which brought in $116.6 billion in revenue last year, is in the spotlight this week around the story of Stephanie Smith: the 22 year old children’s dance instructor was paralyzed from the waist down after eating E. coli-tainted hamburger traced back to the meat supplier.
She was in a coma for nine [...]

Global warming came to an abrupt end this summer
The average June-August 2009 summer temperature for the contiguous United States was below average – the 34th coolest on record, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. August was also below the long-term average. The analysis is based on records [...]

Ardi – First Ape Woman
She lived at the dawn of a new era, when chimps and people began walking (or climbing) along their own evolutionary trails.  This is Ardi – the oldest member of the human family tree we’ve found so far.  Short, hairy and with long arms, she roamed the forests of Africa 4.4million [...]

Two Romanians accused of sophisticated phishing attacks targeting major financial institutions have been extradited to the US for trial.
25 year old Petru Bogdan Belbita and 28 year old Cornel Ionut Tonita, both from Romania, were arrested in Canada and Croatia respectively.  They stand accused, along with five other defendants, of duping customers of financial institutions, [...]

Overstressing the ultra ultra conservative moral fiber
of an overly conservative society?

A leading Egyptian scholar has demanded that people caught importing a female virginity-faking device into the country should face the death penalty.
Abdul Mouti Bayoumi said supplying the item was akin to spreading vice in society, a crime punishable by death in Islamic Sharia law.
The device is [...]

The woman who inspired the classic Beatles song Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, has died at aged 46, a charity said today. The song featured on the ground-breaking 1967 album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
John Lennon’s elder son Julian said it was inspired by a picture he drew of his classmate Lucy O’Donnell [...]

 
Job seekers queue up to attend a job fair  in Chicago.
Despite signs that the economy has resumed growing, unemployed Americans now confront a job market that is bleaker than ever in the current recession, and employment prospects are still getting worse.  Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government [...]

 
Grandparents are stepping up, and the American family may never be the same.  A few years ago, a key microtrend was the Working Retired — aging Americans who were so enjoying work and health that they either wouldn’t retire or were starting second careers altogether. One incidental effect was that grandparents weren’t around to help [...]

Najibullah Zazi after his arrest in a terrorism investigation
Eight years after 9/11, the specter of terrorism still haunts the United States. Just last week, F.B.I. agents were working double time to unravel the alarming case of a Denver airport shuttle driver accused of training with explosives in Pakistan and buying bomb-making chemicals. In Dallas, a [...]

Filoha Meadows in central Colorado
A refuge for the Ute Indians and a transit corridor for the marble quarried for the Washington Monument, Filoha Meadows in central Colorado has been used as farmland, an arthritic retreat center, and a movie set. Developers eyed it to build 15,000 square-foot homes, while others envisioned the entire area under [...]

Chinese researchers have unearthed the fossil of a bird-like dinosaur with four wings in northeastern China, which they suggest is a missing link in dinosaurs’ evolution into birds.   In a paper in the journal Nature, they said they found the well-preserved fossil of the “Anchiornis huxleyi,” which roamed the earth some 160 million years ago, [...]

Artist’s rendering, Qatar-Bahrain Friendship Causeway
The Qatar-Bahrain Friendship Causeway, a 40km long marine causeway featuring a 22km bridge and 18km embankments connecting the west coast of Qatar to the east coast of Bahrain, is scheduled to begin construction in 2010.   The $3 billion project was originally scheduled to begin last year in May 2008, however in [...]

Replica of the Ark of the Covenant in the Royal Arch Room of the George Washington Masonic National Memorial.
When you hear the words “Ark of the Covenant” what comes to mind? For some, Steven Spielberg’s film “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” provides the most vivid pop-culture reference to this mysterious sacred [...]

Archaeologists have found new clues from the Mayan ruins of Kiuic in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula that may shed light on the collapse of the Maya civilization ten centuries ago:
… The latest discoveries from the site may capture the moment of departure.
“The people just walked away and left everything in place,” says archaeologist George Bey of [...]

Job Voyager is a set of interactive charts showing changing occupations reported to the US Census Bureau from 1850-2000. It was made by Jeffrey Heer of the University of California at Berkeley from data collected by the University of Minnesota’s Population Center using the visualization software Flare. You can use the feature to examine the [...]

More skilled immigrants are giving up their American dreams to pursue careers back home, raising concerns that the U.S. may lose its competitive edge in science, technology and other fields.