The U.S. legal system has long assumed that all testimony is not equally credible, that some witnesses are more reliable than others. In tough cases with child witnesses, it assumes adult witnesses to be more reliable. But what if the legal system had it wrong?
Researchers Valerie Reyna, human development professor, and Chuck Brainerd, human development and law school professor--both from Cornell University--argue that like the two-headed Roman god Janus, memory is of two minds--that is, memories are captured and recorded separately and differently in two distinct parts of the mind.
Health & Wellness
A long-suffering Canadian woman with a new lease on life, and the Christian activist from Australia who gave up one of his kidneys to save her, say they want to "inspire" the world with their controversial transplant - performed Thursday in Cyprus after a Toronto hospital refused to do the operation last year on ethical grounds.
|
| ©Australian Broadcasting Corp. |
| Ashwin Falkingham |
Compact fluorescent light bulbs, long touted by environmentalists as a more efficient and longer-lasting alternative to the incandescent bulbs that have lighted homes for more than a century, are running into resistance from waste industry officials and some environmental scientists, who warn that the bulbs' poisonous innards pose a bigger threat to health and the environment than previously thought.
Hyperactive young girls are more likely to have "serious" problems in adulthood, research suggests.
A study of more than 800 girls up to the age of 21 found hyperactivity was linked to poor job prospects, abusive relationships and teenage pregnancy.
A study of more than 800 girls up to the age of 21 found hyperactivity was linked to poor job prospects, abusive relationships and teenage pregnancy.
|
| ©Gianluigi Guercia/AFP |
| Nurses wait to treat patients in the Sizwe hospital TB ward in Edenvale on the outskirt of Johannesburg, South Africa. |
Doctors have diagnosed the first ever UK case of a virtually untreatable strain of tuberculosis, marking a further step in the disease's fightback against the antibiotics that once kept it in check. A man in his 30s is in isolation at a hospital in Glasgow and is being treated with a cocktail of antibiotics in an effort to control the extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), the Guardian has learnt.
According to a little noticed January report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), drug overdoses killed more than 33,000 people in 2005, the last year for which firm data are available. That makes drug overdose the second leading cause of accidental death, behind only motor vehicle accidents (43,667) and ahead of firearms deaths (30,694).
What's more disturbing is that the 2005 figures are only the latest in such a seemingly inexorable increase in overdose deaths that the eras of the 1970s heroin epidemic and the 1980s crack wave pale in comparison. According to the CDC, some 10,000 died of overdoses in 1990; by 1999, that number had hit 20,000; and in the six years between then and 2005, it increased by more than 60%.
What's more disturbing is that the 2005 figures are only the latest in such a seemingly inexorable increase in overdose deaths that the eras of the 1970s heroin epidemic and the 1980s crack wave pale in comparison. According to the CDC, some 10,000 died of overdoses in 1990; by 1999, that number had hit 20,000; and in the six years between then and 2005, it increased by more than 60%.
Hispanics who have even a small amount of plaque build-up in the neck artery that supplies blood to the brain are up to four times more likely to suffer or die from a stroke or heart attack than Hispanics who do not have plaque, according to a study published in the March 19, 2008, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Bad behaviour in schools is being fuelled by "overindulgent" parents who don't know how to say no to their children, according to new research. Teachers are dealing with a "small but significant" number of pupils who throw tantrums in class if they don't get their own way, turn up exhausted because they stay up late and have increasingly "belligerent" parents who take their child's side.
At least 15 military service members or their relatives are believed to have been infected with hepatitis by a nurse suspected of stealing their painkillers during surgery.
|
| ©Jessica Rinaldi/REUTERS |
| A sign marks Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas June 1, 2007. Wal-Mart Stores said on Thursday that its private-label Great Value milk is now being sourced only from cows that have not been treated with artificial growth hormones, such as recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST). |
Wal-Mart Stores Inc said on Thursday that its private-label Great Value milk is now being sourced only from cows that have not been treated with artificial growth hormones, such as recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST).
