Showing posts from February, 2015

Suicide Rates for Older Adults Up 40%

One job of the writer is to stay current with the trends in our societies.  An alarming increase in the number of suicides within our oldest is just such an occurrence. Why after a lifetime of work and planning are so many seniors opting to end their lives?  The answers, according to this study, shows how the changes in our economy are effecting people, leaving them hopeless and grasping for options.  

Suicide rates for adults between 40 and 64 years of age in the U.S. have risen about 40% since 1999, with a sharp rise since 2007. One possible explanation could be the detrimental effects of the economic downturn of 2007-2009, leading to disproportionate effects on house values, household finances, and retirement savings for that age group. In a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers found that external economic factors were present in 37.5% of all completed suicides in 2010, rising from 32.9% in 2005.

In addition, suffocation, a method more likely …

Science Reveals the Best Place to Hide When Zombies Attack

What should you do to survive a Zombie outbreak? Statistical mechanics reveals the ideal hideout.

Reading World War Z, an oral history of the first zombie war, a graduate statistical mechanics class inspired a group of Cornell University researchers to explore how an "actual" zombie outbreak might play out in the U.S.
During the 2015 American Physical Society March Meeting, on Thursday, March 5 in San Antonio, Texas, the group will describe their work modeling the statistical mechanics of zombies--those thankfully fictional "undead" creatures with an appetite for human flesh. Why model the mechanics of zombies? "Modeling zombies takes you through a lot of the techniques used to model real diseases, albeit in a fun context," says Alex Alemi, a graduate stude…

Is Nuclear Power Our Salvation? Can It Power Our World Without Adding to Global Warming?

There are many who feel that nuclear power is much more green than we have been led to believe.

Could it be that most of what we fear about nuclear power stations is wrong?  Perhaps scare tactics from the coal and oil industries?

Top environmentalists and global warming researchers such as James Lovelock have been urging the countries of the world to re-examine the risks of nuclear power when compared to the known costs of global warming and environmental degradation. 

Now film director Robert Stone has created a riveting Sundance Film Festival winning documentary explaining our options in a rapidly changing and warming world in a fascinating exploration of this question.

Stone and his film crew take you to Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island, to waste storage facilities in France and naturally radioactive beaches in Brazil  Stone's film features Stewart Brand of the Whole Earth Catalogue and environmentalists who explain why they’ve changed their minds on this issue.��…

Sci-fi: Are Disasters & Extinctions Caused by Earth's Passing Through the Galactic Equator?

And does dark matter cause mass extinctions and geologic upheavals?

One U.S. researcher thinks so. 



Previous studies have shown that Earth rotates around the disc-shaped Galaxy once every 250 …