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By age 9 months, babies can pick out sad music from happy pieces. Maybe we ALL start out with musicians’ brains: It turns out that trained musicians really DO think differently than the rest of us?in fact?along with successful baseball players?they use their brains the same way that left-handers do.

Psychologists have found that professionally trained musicians use a creative technique called divergent thinking, which utilizes both the left and the right sides of their frontal cortex more heavily than the average person. This is the same way that the brains of people who are left-handed function.
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One in four mammal species is threatened with extinction, and the terrestrial mammals in Southeast Asia are particularly at risk. The top threats to land mammals are habitat loss and harvesting (hunting, use for medicine, fuel and other materials).
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There’s a real equator?the invisible line that divides the earth’s North from its South?but there’s also a “chemical equator” that divides the polluted air of the North from the relatively clear air of the South. But as the South becomes more industrialized, that pollution may creep south. It can also be blown by the wind, making it even harder to figure out where the pollution originates. But scientists have found a way to IDENTIFY the pollutors! They’ve also learned how to suck pollution out of old chemical landfills by planting trees.
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Teen suicide gets plenty of airtime, but a new US study finds that middle-aged whites are emerging as a high-risk group. Could this be due to the recession?

Before 1999, white middle-aged men were the least likely to kill themselves. However, for the period from 1999 to 2005, the rate for African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Native Americans declined or stayed stable while middle-aged whites experienced a significant increase in suicides.
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