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2021-10-28 08:26:28 Examining the Case Against Aaron Swartz

Have you ever had an RSS news feed sent to your mobile phone or computer? If so, you have Aaron Swartz to thank. He helped develop that Internet publishing technology when he was 14 years old. He also helped develop what came to be known as the social news website Reddit. But sadly, the 26-year-old Internet activist was found dead in his apartment in Brooklyn, New York on January 11.His death was called a suicide. Aaron Swartz believed that information is knowledge.He believed the Internet should be used to make that knowledge available to everyone. This belief is what eventually got him in trouble with the law. Aaron Swartz was to face a federal trial in April. He was accused of using computers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to download millions of academic documents from JSTOR. He could have faced 35 years in prison and as much as $1 million in fines.Some people have called the charges extreme

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2021-10-20 07:50:15 Watching for Early Signs of Autism in Babies
Children with autism have difficulty with social skills and communication. They may seem different, have repetitive behaviors and have abnormally intense interests. A widely used medical guide will now list autism under a new definition and name, "autism spectrum disorder." The changes will appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, to be published in May. The "spectrum" represents a group of developmental brain disorders, ranging from mild to severely disabling. A milder form called Asperger's syndrome will no longer be listed as a separate disorder with its own name. Autism is more common in boys than girls. What causes autism is not clear. Scientists are studying genes and possible environmental influences. Doctors usually cannot confirm a diagnosis of autism until a child is about three years old.
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2021-10-17 08:00:03 Medical School in Three Years Instead of Four
Medical schools in the United States traditionally require four years of study. Now, a small number of universities are offering three-year programs. Finishing medical school in three years means new doctors could begin their careers sooner. The reduction of a year could also save up to 25 percent of the cost. That would decrease heavy student-loan debts for some students who borrow money to pay for their education. Schools offering three-year programs include the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and Mercer University in Georgia. New York University in Manhattan is also testing a three-year program. At NYU, 10 percent of the nearly 200 students who entered the School of Medicine last fall were chosen for the new program. Students can change to the four-year program if the faster one is too difficult or too much pressure. Arthur Caplan is a bioethicist.
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2021-10-15 18:11:27 World Bank Sees 'Fragile and 'Uncertain' in 2013
World Bank experts are using the words "fragile" and "uncertain" to describe the economic recovery this year. Their report predicts the global economy will grow a little over two percent in 2013, and slightly more in the following two years. Predictions of limited growth have become familiar since the financial crisis four years ago. Wealthy countries are expected to have slower growth than developing ones as they deal with larger amounts of debt and big budget deficits. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim is urging developing countries to become growth drivers. But he notes that it is important to build a foundation for growth that can last over time.He says, the developed world needs to help developing countries make gains in health, infrastructure and education. Andrew Burns was lead author of the report. He says it is not only important to build roads and bridges, but…
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2021-09-10 16:14:37 New Rules Aim to Improve Food Safety in US
Each year, bad food sickens about one in six Americans. But, proposed new rules raise hopes to improve food safety. Officials say the changes could prevent more than 1 million cases of food-related illnesses each year.The new rules were proposed recently, exactly two years after President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act. The rules are the first step in putting that law into effect. They represent the biggest changes in food safety since the 1930s. The new law makes the Food and Drug Administration responsible for preventing foodborne illnesses. Experts say this is a change in the way that the FDA has dealt with disease outbreaks in the past. Congress passed the law after a series of outbreaks that were linked to spinach, peanut butter and other foods. The agency is proposing to require food manufacturers to show that they have identified where contamination is most likely to happen.

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2021-08-10 07:00:02 At CES in Las Vegas, TVs Were the Stars

Televisions were the stars of January's International Consumer Electronics Show. Known as CES, the yearly gathering in Las Vegas is one of the world's largest consumer electronics trade shows. TVs made news this year because they were bigger and better, with some of the most advanced technology ever. Some TVs used a technology called Organic Light Emitting Diodes, or OLED. They were thinner, lighter, offered better color and were brighter than current LEDs. Ultra High Definition TVs were also popular. Most of UHDTVs on display used something called 4K technology. It has four times more resolution than current HDTVs. And Sharp Electronics showed off a super high definition TV with resolution that is 16 times greater than that of standard high definition TVs. Smart TVs this year were smarter. Many offered technology like voice recognition. One TV from the company TCL uses sensors and voice recognition to know who is watching. It then…

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2021-08-01 07:00:08 Overweight People Found to Have Less Risk of Early Death

New research shows that overweight or even slightly obese people have a lower risk of early death than people considered to be normal weight. Researchers examined the results of 97 studies. Most of the studies were less than 10 years old. They included almost 3 million adults from around the world, including the United States, Canada, China, Taiwan, Brazil, India and Mexico. The researcher was carried out at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States. The study found that people who are considered overweight or slightly obese were five to six percent less likely to die from all causes than people of normal weight. But, people with higher obesity ratings had almost a 30 percent greater risk of death compared to normal-weight individuals. Katherine Flegal led the study. She says she was not surprised that there was no higher risk for overweight people.

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2021-05-11 15:20:09 Income Inequality Seen as World's Biggest Risk Over Next 10 Years

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2021-05-01 17:50:08 Ideas for Climate-Friendly Food Production

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2021-04-16 05:27:41 China Tightens Rules on Internet Use

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