Researchers are trying to figure out why low-income children lag behind their more privileged classmates in high school graduation rates and college attendance. Some of them think that the difference in children’s future academic success can be explained, in part, by their experiences during their summer vacations.
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UPDATE – Dogs recently became sick (and some died) after eating dog food containing a toxic substance called melamine, which was imported from China. Now CNN reports that the Food and Drug Administration says that the same toxic substance may be in chicken and pork produced here in the US. The FDA has discovered that the contaminated wheat gluten, corn gluten, cornmeal, rice bran and other toxic ingredients, which ended up in the dog food and also in animal feed used for pigs and chickens, all came from the same distributor in China. UPDATE: In USA Today, Calum MacLeod writes: "Chinese authorities acknowledged for the first time that ingredients exported to make pet food contained a prohibited chemical, melamine, which is also used to make plastic."
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Astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet they’ve ever seen outside our solar system. It should even have water running on its surface.
The planet orbits a star which is 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra. BBC News quotes astronomer Stephane Udry as saying, “We have estimated that the mean temperature of this ‘super-Earth’ lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid. Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth’s radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky?like our Earth?or covered with oceans.”
Astronomer Xavier Delfosse adds, “Liquid water is critical to life as we know it.” He thinks this planet may become a target for future space explorations.
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Why did the top newspapers in the US fail to challenge the Bush administration’s claims about the need to invade Iraq in order to prevent terrorism, which we now know was based on untruths?
Journalism professor Susan D. Moellar thinks our newspapers are STILL failing us. She studied coverage of terrorism and the war in some of our biggest national dailies, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times and the Boston Globe, from Sept. 11, 2001 through 2007, and says, “Too many journalists from the most important newspapers in the country are still validating President Bush’s combination of different types of terrorism into a single category of threat.
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