- Charcoal for African Cookstoves, What's the Story?
You may have seen pictures of women in Africa cooking their daily meals on a small cookstove. These cooking implements look remarkably similar to the portable charcoal grills an American family might bring to the beach for an afternoon of grilling hot dogs and hamburgers. Imagine using one of these at your kitchen table to prepare nearly every meal of your life.
In Mozambique (a coastal nation in Southwest Africa, just north of South Africa), the average lifespan is 47 years, the average income is $1 per day – minimum wage is a little more than double that, but high unemployment cuts the average in half. Charcoal is the cooking element of choice. Among market shoppers and sellers we met, charcoal was deemed to be the best cooking option because it is easily available and "not dangerous."
- Earthquake Hits Northern Italy
A powerful earthquake shook Italy's industrial and densely populated northeast early Sunday, killing six people and felling homes and church steeples around the historic city of Ferrara.
Emergency services said at least 50 people were injured in the 6.0-magnitude quake, which struck just after 4 a.m. (10 p.m. ET Saturday), sending thousands of people running into the streets in town and cities from the Emilia-Romagna region to Venice.
Authorities said the quake's epicenter was the commune of Finale Emilia, 36 kilometers (22 miles) north of Bologna.
A 29-year-old Moroccan man was killed by a falling girder when a factory building collapsed in the small town of Ponte Rodoni di Bondeno.
- Lose Weight While You Sleep!
Want to lose weight but find it hard to hit the gym three times a week or eating 1,500 calories per day? You might not have to do either. New research suggest sleeping more could be enough to keep the flab away.
Research into the circadian clock that regulates our sleep-wake cycle shows disruptions to the clock may be linked to metabolic disorders such as obesity and type-2 diabetes.
And researchers say sleeping for eight hours a night and eating during daylight hours could be as important in controlling weight gain as diet and exercise.
Gad Asher, clinician and medical researcher from the Department of Biological Chemistry at Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, presented research to a Garvan Institute seminar on obesity in Melbourne last night that found every cell in the body has a circadian clock.
- Happy, Happy Parents!
Raising a family can be a difficult matter. But does it make one happy or miserable? Of course part of the answer is that it depends... Contrary to some scholarship and popular belief, parents experience greater levels of happiness and meaning in life than people without children, according to researchers from the University of California, Riverside, the University of British Columbia and Stanford University. Parents also are happier during the day when they are caring for their children than during their other daily activities, the researchers found in a series of studies conducted in the United States and Canada.
- EPA: Protect Yourself from the Sun this Summer!
The warming temperatures will bring many people out into the sun to get a little color on their skins. The sun, while being the source of all life on Earth, is also quite lethal if exposed for too long. As summer approaches, it is good to remember a few things about protecting your skin from the great ball of fire in the sky. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has teamed up with the National Council on Skin Cancer Prevention, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and National Park Service (NPS) in a joint effort to spread the word. They have designated the Friday before Memorial Day as "Don't Fry Day" to highlight the important message.
- New Jersey Takes Slow, Steady Approach to Offshore Wind
The international wind power industry is watching Washington, DC to see if lawmakers will extend the federal production tax credit (PTC) for wind power. But their eyes are also focused on Trenton, the state capital of New Jersey, to see if state regulators there will help launch America's long-awaited offshore wind energy industry.
- Tropic Atmospheric Circulation
An University of California - Riverside led team has identified black carbon and tropospheric ozone as the most likely drivers of large-scale atmospheric circulation change in the Northern Hemisphere tropics zone. While stratospheric ozone depletion has already been shown to be the primary driver of the expansion of the tropics in the Southern Hemisphere, the researchers are the first to report that black carbon and tropospheric ozone are the most likely primary drivers of the tropical expansion observed in the Northern Hemisphere.
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