Free Republic

A procedure that inserts fecal matter from a healthy person into the intestines of someone with diarrhea has been found to be a better treatment than antibiotics.

WASHINGTON - The Intercounty Connector, a highway that stretches between Gaithersburg and Laurel in Maryland, could see an increase in its speed limit this year. An engineering study found the speed limit of the highway could be raised from its current limit of 55 mph to 60 mph. The ICC, which opened in 2011, gives commuters a quick way to get from Interstate 270 to Interstate 95. "We wanted to have one year of actual operating experience before we looked at speed limits at all," Maryland Transportation Authority Executive Secretary Harold M. Bartlett tells WTOP. Bartlett says he thinks there...

SOUTH AUSTRALIA, Australia (CBSDC) – Researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia have found another purpose for mistletoe – apart from helping potential suitors steal kisses around the holidays. Mistletoe could also be used to help the effectiveness of chemotherapy, or could even act as an alternative to chemotherapy for treatment of colon cancer, according to Newswise. The American Institute for Cancer Research in Washington, D.C. noted on its official website that colorectal cancers are preventable – as many as 45 percent of occurrences could be curbed with dietary and habit modifications. Despite that fact, the news of a...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Alabama Men Arrested on Terrorism Charges U.S. Attorney’s Office December 11, 2012 Southern District of Alabama MOBILE, AL—U.S. Attorney Kenyen R. Brown of the Southern District of Alabama and Stephen E. Richardson, Special Agent in Charge of the Mobile Division of the FBI, announced that Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair, 25, and Randy Wilson, also known as Rasheed Wilson, 25, both U.S. citizens living in Mobile, were arrested today on terrorism charges filed in the Southern District of Alabama. A criminal complaint signed on December 10, 2012, charges Abukhdair and Wilson with conspiring to...

According to NBC News, a newly released peer-reviewed study has concluded that sea levels between 1993 and 2011 rose by 3.2 millimeters per year. This number is nearly 60 percent more than the 2-millimeter annual projection made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change over the same time period. The disparity between the two numbers raises a point that the projections for the upcoming decades could also be too low and that sea level could rise much more than current estimates predict. Here are some facts and details about the new study and what it could mean for...

The possibility that autism is linked to traffic pollution has been raised by researchers in California. Their study of more than 500 children said those exposed to high levels of pollution were three times more likely to have autism than children who grew up with cleaner air. However, other researchers said traffic was a "very unlikely" and unconvincing explanation for autism. The findings were presented in the Archives of General Psychiatry journal. Data from the US Environmental Protection Agency were used to work out levels of pollution for addresses in California. This was used to compare exposure to pollution, in...

LOS ANGELES -- Citing harm to marine life, California coastal regulators on Wednesday soundly rejected a utility's plan to map offshore earthquake faults near a nuclear power plant by blasting loud air cannons. The unanimous vote by the California Coastal Commission came after an hours-long public hearing attended by environmentalists, fishermen and residents who were overwhelmingly opposed to the seismic testing. The proposed survey by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. involves firing sonic pulses into the ocean. Sensors on the seafloor would pick up the echoes to create 3-D maps of geologic faults that the utility said are needed to...

As the marathon campaign season wraps up researchers confirm what many have suspected: civility has taken a vacation If the political postings you've seen lately on Facebook and Twitter seem particularly outrageous, it's because they are. From the beginning of the political conventions to the eve of the final debate, social media and blog postings about US presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have been relentlessly negative, according to a new Pew study. "We found social media very harsh," Tom Rosenstiel, director of Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism, told the Guardian. "We also found it fairly insensitive to...

TORONTO — A single junk-food meal rich in saturated fat is detrimental to the health of the arteries, researchers in Canada said. Dr. Anil Nigam and colleagues at the University of Montreal-affiliated EPIC Center of the Montreal Heart Institute compared the effects of a junk-food meal and a typical Mediterranean meal on the vascular endothelium, the inner lining of the blood vessels. Endothelial function is closely linked to the long-term risk of developing coronary artery disease.

A "study" by Michigan Citizen Action, which says that it works to "advance a progressive agenda," claims the repeal of Michigan's item pricing law is a bad deal for workers and consumers. Though the report is receiving attention from the media with little analysis, it proves nothing that it purports to show and relies on a poor understanding of economic productivity. As a reminder, the item pricing law forced Michigan retailers to individually mark most items sold on store shelves. It also required paper tags and outlawed technological advances like electronic price labeling and modern computer systems. Michigan was the...

Power East Coast via wind? Doable with 144,000 offshore turbines, study saysBy Miguel Llanos, NBC News 10 hours ago Placing wind turbines off the East Coast could meet the entire demand for electricity from Florida to Maine, according to engineering experts at Stanford University. It would require 144,000 offshore turbines standing 270 feet tall — not one of which exists since proposals have stalled due to controversy and costs. But the analysis shows it's doable and where the best locations are, says study co-author Mark Jacobson, a Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering. The team is not advocating for...

Peer pressure continues to prompt high school students to light up, new research suggests, because popular teens tend to smoke and they induce others to take up the habit in an effort to fit in and be liked. “Popularity is a strong predictor of smoking,” said study author Thomas Valente, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. “We haven’t done enough to make it cool not to smoke.” The finding, published online Sept. 6 in the Journal of Adolescent Health, confirms trends Valente found in previous research studying smoking in students in...

Anyone using file-sharing service BitTorrent to download the latest film or music release is likely to be monitored, UK-based researchers suggest. A Birmingham University study indicates that an illegal file-sharer downloading popular content would be logged by a monitoring firm within three hours. The team said it was "surprised" by the scale of the monitoring. Copyright holders could use the data to crack down on illegal downloads. The three-year research was carried out by a team of computer scientists who developed software that acted like a BitTorrent file-sharing client and logged all the connections made to it. BitTorrent is a...

[bold added] Today, the University of Colorado released an analysis of “state-by-state factors leading to the Electoral College selection of every U.S. president since 1980” and found that these factors add up to a Romney victory in 2012 with an Obama loss in Colorado. When just the two major parties are considered, their analysis predicts that Romney will receive 51.9% of the vote compared to Obama’s predicted 48.1% nationally. According to the two political science professors Kenneth Bickers and Michael Berry, the “key is the economy”. The two explained their “prediction model”: “[The] prediction model stresses economic data from the...

Allegations of scientific misconduct have prompted the University of Texas to investigate a professor's study that found adults with gay parents reported significantly different life experiences than the children of married, heterosexual biological parents. The study, authored by associate professor of sociology Mark Regnerus, made a splash when it was published last month in the journal Social Science Research. It has since drawn criticism from scholars at UT and elsewhere. Bucking the consensus of the past decade of scholarship that the sexual orientation of parents does not negatively affect children in consequential ways Regnerus found that adults with gay parents...

MESSAGE TO BELIEVERS: In this world we study hard the books of this world in order to get a degree to be able to get a job in this life. As yourself today. The BIBLE is the book of life. Do we study the bible as hard as we studied these " worldly " books?? And if not, then what kind of " job" do we expect out of our spiritual lives?? We know from school to finish a book with notes in order to answer questions. How many have read the full bible in this way?? We are all...

The State Department confirmed this morning that it’s reached a deal with the Chinese government in the case of blind dissident Chen Guangcheng: The Chinese Government stated today that Mr. Chen Guangcheng has the same right to travel abroad as any other citizen of China. Mr. Chen has been offered a fellowship from an American university, where he can be accompanied by his wife and two children. The Chinese Government has indicated that it will accept Mr. Chen’s applications for appropriate travel documents.

Hardly a week passes, it seems, without yet another “scientific” study disparaging people of faith. This week’s study, ginned up by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, dubiously concludes that the “highly religious” are less compassionate toward the needful than non-believers. Published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, the study defines “compassion” as an emotion felt when people see the sufferings of others which then motivates them to help, often at personal risk or cost. The study’s lead author, Laura Saslow, says she was inspired by an atheist friend who told her he donated to earthquake...

Gentlemen: on a scale of one to ten, how much do you value your relationship with your wife? Girlfriend? Mother? Sister? Female co-workers? If you answered more than, say, a five, you might want to skip this article entirely, because it could get you into a lot of trouble. You see, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently commissioned a study from the TransAnalytics research firm and the Highway Safety Research Center at the University of North Carolina. And that study found that women seem predisposed to hit the gas when they really mean to hit the brake. In fact,...

Energy: Small- and medium-size businesses serving Louisiana's energy industry are shedding employees, dipping into personal savings or moving elsewhere to stay afloat. The administration's war on fossil fuels is taking its toll. The federal six-month moratorium on drilling that was issued in May 2010, after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, has been officially lifted, but it might as well still be in effect. The glacial permitting process put in place in the aftermath in the name of public safety is killing an industry pledged to wean us from the "energy of the past" will not mourn. A...