| Kids' Smiles Predict Their Future Marriage Success Pictures of grinning kids may reveal more than childhood happiness: a study from DePauw University shows that how intensely people smile in childhood photographs, as indicated by crow’s feet around the eyes, predicts their adult marriage success.According to the research, people whose smiles were weakest in snapshots from childhood through young adulthood were most likely to report being divorced in middle and old age. Among the weakest smilers in college photographs, one in four ended up divorcing, compared with one in 20 of the widest smilers. The same pattern held among even those pictured at an average age of 10. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Invest Trillions Today to Keep Climate Change at Bay: IEA Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels and meet energy needs, the International Energy Agency warned today.IEA's "World Energy Outlook" raises the stakes for U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark. Delaying the shift to low-carbon energy by just a few years, it says, will make it impossible to avert catastrophic temperature rises. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Poisoned Shipments: Are Strange,Illicit Sinkings Making the Mediterranean Toxic? In October 2009 the government of Italy announced that a wreck discovered off the southwestern tip of the country is the Catania , a passenger vessel sunk during World War I--and not the Cunski , a cargo ship loaded with radioactive waste, as alleged by district authorities from nearby Calabria. Few locals are reassured, says Michael Leonardi of the University of Calabria. He and others maintain that the putative Cunski is still out there and is just one of numerous ships full of poisonous garbage that a crime syndicate has scuttled in the Mediterranean Sea. Such a startling allegation, if true, would not only damage the tourism and fishing industries along this idyllic coast but also compromise the health of Mediterranean residents.Processing and safely storing waste from the chemical, pharmaceutical and other industries can cost hundreds, even thousands, of dollars per ton--which makes illegal disposal highly profitable. According to the Italian environmental organization Legambiente, some waste shippers that have operational bases in southern Italy have been using the Mediterranean as a dump. While acknowledging that “no wreck has yet been found that contains toxic or radioactive waste,” physicist Massimo Scalia of the University of Rome, La Sapienza, who has chaired two parliamentary commissions on illegal waste disposal, argues that other vidence makes their existence “beyond reasonable doubt.” [More] rss.sciam.com |
Earth Day Events In a city where green space has grown by 570 acres in the past eight years, every day could be considered earth day. This is especially true in April, when the events leading up to the formal Earth Day, April 25, could fill every page of your calendar (no doubt made from recycled materials). One of the largest takes place on Sunday in Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. EarthFest, a three-hour activity-filled celebration, includes a trek led by the Urban Park Rangers; displays of birds of prey from t... nytimes.com |
Dance Listings A selected guide to the movement arts in New York and the area. nytimes.com |