The European Parliament is pushing for an outright ban on the commercialisation of the cloning of animals, preventing their use for meat, as well as dairy and other livestock by-products.
It has voted overwhelmingly for an amendment within European Union (EU) legislation to ban cloning animals for economic reasons. "It's degrading to animals and causes suffering. Animals are sentient beings and should be treated with respect. They are not commodities," said Janusz Wojciechowski, the Polish member (MEP) who proposed this declaration. He was "very satisfied" with the vote which showed that MEPs put animal welfare above economics.
Girls are becoming as good as boys at mathematics, and are still better at reading
Tradition has it that boys are good at counting and girls are good at reading. So much so that Mattel once produced a talking Barbie doll whose stock of phrases included "Math class is tough!"
Although much is made of differences between the brains of adult males and females, the sources of these differences are a matter of controversy. Some people put forward cultural explanations and note, for example, that when girls are taught separately from boys they often do better in subjects such as maths than if classes are mixed. Others claim that the differences are rooted in biology, are there from birth, and exist because girls' and boys' brains have evolved to handle information in different ways.
Cathleen F. Crowley
Times UnionWed, 04 Jun 2008 03:47 UTC
About two dozen Union College students have fallen ill with vomiting, diarrhea and nausea over the past few days. The county Health Department is investigating the cause of the outbreak, which has the symptoms of a norovirus.
Union College is on a trimester system, so students are on campus longer than other local colleges. Final exams begin next week and graduation is June 15.
Students began reporting to the school's infirmary on Sunday, but the volume of cases increased Monday evening and Tuesday, said Kathy Sen, supervising community health nurse for communicable disease control for the county.
Four wards have been closed at West Suffolk Hospital after the number of patients suffering winter vomiting virus doubled.
Staff at the Bury St Edmunds hospital are warning people who are displaying symptoms of the highly contagious Norovirus to stay away in order to avoid further infections.
A total of 58 patients have now contracted the virus - 43 have fully recovered and 15 are still displaying symptoms - compared to 24 last week.
Heavy marijuana use over many years appears to shrink parts of the brain that control emotion and memory, a new Australian study shows.
Brain scans on 15 men who smoked at least five joints a day for more than a decade show for the first time that they have structural brain abnormalities not seen in non-smokers.
Mothers play an important role in determining how much fathers get involved in taking care of their infants, according to new research.
A study of 97 couples found that fathers were more involved in the day-to-day care of their infants when they received active encouragement from their wife or partner.
In fact, this encouragement was important even after taking into account fathers' and mothers' views about how involved dads should be, the overall quality of the couple's parenting relationship, and how much mothers worked outside the home.
In addition, fathers' beliefs about how involved they should be in child care did not matter when mothers were highly critical of fathers' parenting. In other words, fathers didn't put their beliefs into practice when faced with a particularly judgmental mother.
"Mothers are in the driver's seat," said Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, co-author of the study and assistant professor of human development and family science at Ohio State University.
The notion that text-messaging is destroying the writing skills of American students gets two distinct reactions from linguists.
Jacquie Ream's response: OMG (Oh My God).
"We have a whole generation being raised without communications skills," says Ream, a teacher and author of the book K.I.S.S. Keep It Short and Simple.
That kind of talk leaves Derek Denis LOL (Laughing Out Loud).
Hundreds of Germans, who believe themselves to be at grips with the Devil, seek out priests for exorcism. One person per day undergoes a full-scale exorcism. Many suffered sexual abuse as children.
Babies born in areas where drinking water is heavily disinfected with chlorine are at double the risk of heart problems, cleft palate or major brain defects, according to a new study.
Although evidence is mounting that GM crops are not safe for consumption and that they pose significant risks for the environment, Africa is still being exhorted to feed its people on GMOs.
The GMO push, backed by big dollars, is coming at a time when the technology is being rejected elsewhere. For instance, in April 1999, the anti-GMO campaign in Europe forced most big manufacturers there to publicly commit themselves to stop using GM ingredients in their European brands.
