Jessica Kovler writes in the August 12th New York Times that "There’s nothing nicer than a tune playing in your head?until you can’t turn it off." And when you get a song stuck in your brain, it always seems to be some stupid advertising jingle or trivial tune that you never liked much anyway. Why do some songs stick, and what can we do to erase them?
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Whenever we take a new drug, we’re concerned about possible side effects. One of the most unusual side effects ever discovered has been found with high doses of drugs for Parkinson’s disease?they caused people to become compulsive gamblers. Two patients each lost $60,000 in only three months.
Dr. Mark Stacy says, “In the same week I saw two patients with major and new gambling problems?and it was after I increased their medication.” He researched the medical records of 1884 patients and found nine who had developed gambling addictions that led to financial hardship. All the patients were taking levodopa, which increases dopamine in the brain. But their new gambling habits seemed to be associated with another drug they were also taking.
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Scientists think global warming will melt the Alps over the next twenty years, causing the mountains to collapse into piles of rubble. The mountain range is made up of rocks, with an icy crust of permafrost holding them together. This ice is melting fast, and the rocks are falling in great avalanches, making climbing dangerous. One avalanche killed 50 people 4 years ago.
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An Internet worm detected Monday is spreading around the world like wildfire. The worm has has been spreading rapidly across the Internet, according to the CERT Coordination Center, a government funded security watchdog group at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
The worm instructs infected computers to assault the Microsoft Update servers continuously after 12:01 a.m., August 16. Such an attack, launched by thousands of computers with high-speed connections, would prevent users from being able to reach the service, experts said. The worm is instructed to continue doing this until December 31, 2003, after which it will attack the update site on the 16th of every month.
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