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Your Cute Rubber Duck May Be a Haven for Bacteria Photo A study that tested 19 different bath toys found that the murky water released by rubber ducks can contain “potentially pathogenic bacteria” that can cause eye, ear and stomach infections. Credit Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images LONDON — There’s an ugly truth about the rubber duck, the popular bathroom toy that children put in their mouths and use to squeeze bath water into their siblings’ faces.
Something yucky is likely to be inside, scientists say: “potentially pathogenic bacteria” that can cause eye, ear and stomach infections.
A study by American and Swiss researchers found that toy ducks appeared to be a breeding ground for microbes. The murky water released from four out of every five ducks tested included Legionella along with Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria, often associated with infections acquired in hospitals, the authors of the study said.
The study, conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Te..
China’s Space Station May Crash to Earth on April Fools’ Day Photo A rocket carrying China’s first space station, Tiangong-1, lifted off on Sept. 29, 2011. China lost control of the station about two years ago. Credit Lintao Zhang/Getty Images The sky is falling. Again.
China’s first space station, Tiangong-1, abandoned and out of control, is expected to drop out of orbit around this weekend, with pieces of it likely to survive the fiery re-entry and crash somewhere on Earth.
Don’t worry.
According to space debris experts, the chances that you personally will be hit by of a chunk of space metal are essentially zero — less than one in a trillion.
“It’s really very, very, very tiny odds,” said Andrew Abraham, an analyst leading efforts to track and predict the demise of the space station at the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit that performs research and analysis for the United States Air Force. “I certainly would worry about things like crossing the street far more than debris from Tia..
We Might Soon Resurrect Extinct Species. Is It Worth the Cost? Photo An illustration of an extinct rat kangaroo, published in 1825. Researchers recently analyzed the costs and benefits of re-establishing and maintaining 16 species in Australia and New Zealand that went extinct in the last millennium. Credit Florilegius, via Getty Images With enough determination, money and smarts, scientists just might revive the woolly mammoth, or some version of it, by splicing genes from ancient mammoths into Asian elephant DNA. The ultimate dream is to generate a sustainable population of mammoths that can once again roam the tundra.
But here’s a sad irony to ponder: What if that dream came at the expense of today’s Asian and African elephants, whose numbers are quickly dwindling because of habitat loss and poaching?
“In 50 years, we might not have those elephants,” said Joseph Bennett, an assistant professor and conservation researcher at Carleton University in Ontario. Dr. Bennett has spent his c..
Antarctic Ice Reveals Earth’s Accelerating Plant Growth Photo A boreal forest in Quebec. A new study suggests the world’s plants capture an extra 28 billion tons of carbon each year. Credit De Agostini/Getty Images For decades, scientists have been trying to figure out what all the carbon dioxide we have been putting into the atmosphere has been doing to plants. It turns out that the best place to find an answer is where no plants can survive: the icy wastes of Antarctica.
As ice forms in Antarctica, it traps air bubbles. For thousands of years, they have preserved samples of the atmosphere. The levels of one chemical in that mix reveal the global growth of plants at any point in that history.
“It’s the whole Earth — it’s every plant,” said J. Elliott Campbell of the University of California, Merced.
Analyzing the ice, Dr. Campbell and his colleagues have discovered that in the last century, plants have been growing at a rate far faster than at any other time in the last 54,000 years. ..
A 50-foot campaign poster of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi stares down over Cairo's Tahrir Square, where hundreds of thousands of Egyptians demanded bread, freedom and social justice during the 2011 Arab Spring uprising. Across from the square, a huge screen shows a video montage of the President and his supporters.
Supported by More Than Just a Sell-Off in Tech?: DealBook Briefing Photo Credit Paulo Whitaker/Reuters Good Wednesday. Here’s what we’re watching.
• Are we witnessing the end of the tech mania?
• Amazon has shed more than $50 billion in market value.
•Are investors waking up to Tesla’s real problem?
• Mark Zuckerberg agreed to testify before Congress.
• SoftBank and Saudi Arabia are planning the world’s largest solar energy project.
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Are we witnessing the end of a mania?Investors, always willing to believe in technology companies, spent the last three years piling into the shares of companies like Facebook, Amazon and Netflix with special abandon. Now the intellectual underpinnings of the tech rally are being seriously tested.
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Continue reading the main story Stocks in the best-known tech companies have plunged in recent days. The NYSE FANG+ index, which tracks the share price of 10 companies, including Facebook, App..
Supported by Energy & Environment $9.5 Billion Purchase by Concho Is Latest Sign of West Texas Oil Boom Photo A rig in West Texas, where production is threatening to outstrip the pipeline capacity. The Concho Resources purchase of RSP Permian comes at a precarious moment. Credit James Durbin/Midland Reporter-Telegram, via Associated Press HOUSTON — Two Texas oil companies joined forces on Wednesday in the biggest deal yet in the Southwestern oil patch, one that should add momentum to the rush to produce more oil as prices rise.
The creation of a shale-oil colossus comes at a precarious moment, when production in the region is expanding so fast that pipeline construction is barely keeping up. That may cap the potential of the deal, at least over the next year or two, to get oil to the market profitably.
The move by Concho Resources to purchase RSP Permian for $9.5 billion will make it the biggest shale oil and natural gas producer in the Permian Basin, the oil-rich area. With 27 ri..
Firms promise to help consumers spot metabolic red flags. Critics say the services persuade healthy people to seek unneeded treatment.
Everyone can tell when I’m behind. Every visit is pared to essentials. Paperwork is postponed, chatting minimized.
With one year to go until the UK departs the EU, the trade association for the car sector has issued a fresh ferocious Brexit warning, cautioning that a cliff edge – even after the agreed transition period – would be disastrous for one of Britain’s most important industries.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said on Wednesday that while the recently established transition deal between the UK and the EU “provides some welcome breathing space” the industry still needs to see rapid progress and clarity on many fronts.
The UK’s continued ability to trade freely with the EU – which is its largest trading partner – is essential, the SMMT said, but so are the local conditions under which manufacturers and developers operate.
Read more UK car production slides as Brexit erodes confidence “Business rates, capital allowances and energy costs, for instance, must all be globally competitive; training and skills for a productive workforce must focus on new technologies and..
