Free Republic

BUFFALO — Many 4-year-olds cannot count up to their own age when they arrive at preschool, and those at the Stanley M. Makowski Early Childhood Center are hardly prodigies. Most live in this city’s poorer districts and begin their academic life well behind the curve. But there they were on a recent Wednesday morning, three months into the school year, counting up to seven and higher, even doing some elementary addition and subtraction. At recess, one boy, Joshua, used a pointer to illustrate a math concept known as cardinality, by completing place settings on a whiteboard. “You just put one...

PASADENA, Calif. - A NASA telescope has detected for the first time the building blocks of planets around brown dwarfs, suggesting that such failed stars probably undergo the same planet-building process. Until now, the microscopic crystal building blocks that eventually collide to form planets have only been seen around stars and comets - considered the remnants of the solar system. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope recently spotted the tiny crystals and dust grains circling five brown dwarfs located 520 light years away in the Chamaeleon constellation. The crystals, composed of a green mineral commonly found on Earth known as olivine, are...

NEW YORK CHILD PSYCHOLOGIST ARRESTED FOR CHILD PORN -- Arrest is latest in global Internet child pornography probe that has netted more than 1,200 -- LONG ISLAND, N.Y. - The Suffolk County Police Department Computer Crimes Section and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Resident Agent-in-Charge Office in Long Island today announced the arrest of a Long Island-based child psychologist for possession of child pornography. Peter Mies, 57, of 38 Jay Court, Northport, New York, was arrested this morning by Suffolk County detectives and ICE agents as a result of a joint, ongoing investigation into the receipt and possession...