International News Desk – At Home: Rough Terrain – Around the World: Galactic Vampires


At Home: Rough Terrain

For those trying to increase their mobility, there are a number of therapeutic training centres scattered across the country. Few, however, take the real-world approach of the Stan Cassidy Centre for Rehabilitation, an innovative outdoor rehabilitation park in Fredericton, NB.

As The Globe and Mail reports, the park, unique within Canada, ?is designed with real-world obstacles such as potholes, curbs and uneven surfaces.? Because the park is outdoors, ?patients have to contend with the weather as well . . . [but] in a supervised setting.?

Robert Leckey, medical director for the Centre, told reporters, ?The big theme for us is transition back into the community in a safe way.? He added that ?Too often people go home and stay home because they’re scared to go outside ? here they can learn to handle all the conditions.?

The facility encourages maximum independence for patients, who visit the Centre for ?speech therapy, mobility assistance and training for a transition to independent living.? It sees some 30,000 patient visits per year, of which 3,000 are children.

The park, which is named rehabilitation advocate and entrepreneur Stan Cassidy, is ?funded by a mix of government money and corporate donations.?

Around the World: Galactic Vampires

Vampire mythology has surged to record popularity as books, movies, and TV shows featuring the bloodsuckers jump on the trend. But a recent scientific discovery suggests that vampires may actually exist, and they may be closer than you think.

As the National Geographic‘s Daily News Site reports, vampire stars, which ?drain life away from other stars,? have been discovered in our home galaxy, the Milky Way.
The stars appear hotter and younger than their neighbouring stars, and scientists believe that they ?look so youthful because they’ve stolen hydrogen fuel from other stars.?

Usually, such stars are seen ?in dense star clusters,? but these were found ?in the Milky Way’s galactic bulge, a dense region of stars and gas surrounding the galaxy’s center.? Scientists theorize that these so-called ?blue stragglers? may have formed differently than vampire stars in other galaxies. While usually such stars steal energy by colliding with others, It’s possible that these vampires ?may have formed by ripping hydrogen off their companion stars.?

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