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Ethnic and racial minorities will account for a majority of the U.S. population in a little more than a generation, according to new projections from the Census Bureau. The Bureau calculates that by 2042, Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander will outnumber non-Hispanic whites. Four years ago, officials had projected the shift would not occur until 2050. The main reason for the accelerating change is significantly higher birthrates among immigrants, The New York Times reports.

OTTAWA (AFP) - Air pollution this year will kill more than 20,000 Canadians, the Canadian Medical Association said Wednesday in a report. The research on the human costs of pollution and pollution-related diseases estimated that around 21,000 people in Canada will die from breathing in toxic substances drifting in the air this year. By 2031, short term exposure to air pollution will claim close to 90,000 lives in Canada, while long-term exposure will kill more than 700,000, the report said...

WASHINGTON — White people will no longer make up a majority of Americans by 2042, according to new government projections. That's eight years sooner than previous estimates, made in 2004. The nation has been growing more diverse for decades, but the process has sped up through immigration and higher birth rates among minority residents, especially Hispanics. It is also growing older. "The white population is older and very much centered around the aging baby boomers who are well past their high fertility years," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "The future of America...

Census report sees minorities becoming majority by 2042 BY OLIVIA WINSLOW | olivia.winslow@newsday.com 6:11 PM EDT, August 13, 2008 In a new report out Thursday, the U.S. Census Bureau projects the nation will become much more diverse by midcentury, with minorities forecast to become the majority population by 2042, experts said. The growing national diversity is also a trend seen locally, particularly among Hispanics, experts said. "Hispanics are primarily drawn here by economic opportunity," Koppelman continued. "If the economy remains robust on Long Island, this population will continue to expand." The Census Bureau projects that minorities, now roughly one-third of...

LIVERPOOL, United Kingdom, August 12, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A recent study by the University of Liverpool found that the contraceptive pill may adversely affect a woman's natural ability to choose a genetically favorable mate. The ability to choose a genetically favorable mate is ascribed in part to pheromones, chemicals that can cause behavioral changes in the opposite sex. These chemicals also contain the genes involved in immunity response. When these genes interact with normal skin bacteria, they influence an individual's particular body odor. Research has indicated that women tend to be more attracted to the odors of men whose genes...

SCIENTISTS have been stunned by the discovery of a shark that had eaten a polar bear. Part of the jaw of a young polar bear was found in the stomach of a Greenland shark in Svalbard, northern Norway. Kit Kovacs, of the Norwegian Polar Institute, said: "We've never heard of this before. "We don't know how it got there. We can't say whether or not the shark took a swimming young bear or ate a carcase.

Scientists have developed two light-warping materials that takes them step closer to cloaking devices that could render people invisible. Wormholes could end messy wiring and speed up computers Scientists create the sound of silence Harry Potter invisibility cloak 'within five years' In recent years, several teams around the world have shown with mathematics how a cloaking device could work in principle, by making light waves flow around an object - just as water in a river flows undisturbed around a smooth rock.

ORLANDO, Fla. — A team of psychic detectives is assisting Orlando police in their search for missing three-year-old Florida girl Caylee Marie Anthony, according to local news reports. The group, known as "Body Hunters" and lead by psychic detective Gale St. John, is "blind driving" around Central Florida in search for the toddler who was last seen June 16, Local6.com reported. "We will not even look at street names," psychic detective Gale St. John told the TV station and its Web site on Monday. "We drive and go completely on feeling instinct, chasing down what we call a person signature."...

By viewing evolution as the motion of energy flows toward a stationary state (entropy), evolution can be explained by the second law of thermodynamics, a law which conventionally describes physical systems. In this view, a cheetah serves as an energy transfer mechanism, and beneficial mutations allow the animal to transfer more energy within its environment, helping even out the energy.

In "Hyping Health Risks," Geoffrey Kabat, an epidemiologist himself, shows how activists, regulators and scientists distort or magnify minuscule environmental risks. He duly notes the accomplishments of epidemiology, such as uncovering the risks of tobacco smoking and the dangers of exposure to vinyl chloride and asbestos. And he acknowledges that industry has attempted to manipulate science. But he is concerned about a less reported problem: "The highly charged climate surrounding environmental health risks can create powerful pressure for scientists to conform and to fall into line with a particular position." Mr. Kabat looks at four claims -- those trying to...

How to Stop the Flood of Catalogs (and Help Save the Climate) A report by the group ForestEthics estimates that destroying forests to make paper for junk mail releases as much greenhouse gas pollution as 9 million cars. Another way to look at it: Junk mail produces as much pollution as seven U.S. states combined, or as much as heating 13 million homes each winter. While the estimates may or may not be accurate, the point is indisputable: Junk mail is a waste. (To most people, it's an annoying part of the trip to the mailbox, anyway.) Not convinced? NASA...

Predictably, in the wake of Russia sending reinforcements to back up its peacekeepers under seige by the Georgian army in the tiny disputed territory of South Ossetia, Arizona Senator and Republican Presidential candidate John McCain is denouncing the move as "Russian aggression" against Georgia. Nevermind that it was the Georgian army which launched the offensive that ignited the present round of fighting, and thousands of refugees have been streaming out of South Ossetia into Russia.

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - If Americans in many states felt hot last month there was good reason because it was the 30th warmest July on record, using data going back to 1895, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency said Friday. NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina did an analysis of weather records dating back to 1895 to draw conclusions, the agency announced in an emailed statement Friday. Researchers said they found: * July temperatures were generally higher than average across the West and Northeast and below average in the Midwest. * Five states (Conn., Mass., N.J.,...

Maybe the snow in the Cascade Mountains isn't in such immediate peril from global warming after all. Despite previous studies suggesting a warmer climate is already taking a bite out of Washington's snowpack, there's no clear evidence that human-induced climate change has caused a drop in 20th century snow levels, according to a new study by University of Washington scientists. In fact, the newest study also predicts the Cascade snows — vital to water supplies, crop irrigation and salmon — could enjoy a delay in the effects of global warming.

The ships' logs of great maritime figures such as Lord Nelson and Captain Cook have cast new light on climate change by suggesting that global warming may not be an entirely man-made phenomenon. Scientists have uncovered a treasure trove of meteorological information contained in the detailed logs kept by those on board the vessels that established Britain's great seafaring traditition including those on Nelsons' Victory and Cook's Endeavour.

Religions thrived to protect our ancestors against the ravages of disease, according to a radical new evolutionary theory of the genesis of faith. Prof Richard Dawkins the atheist and sceptic, has condemned religion as a "virus of the mind" but it seems that people became religious for good reason - actually to avoid infection by viruses and other diseases - according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences. Dr Corey Fincher and Prof Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, come to this conclusion after studying why religions are far more...

As a free nation, a democratic nation, and a global superpower, America’s fate, today more than ever, is to midwife and manage the emergence of the first world generation. Not an easy task, as technology and globalization make every surviving cultural tradition anywhere suddenly replaced or confronted by every other on this shrinking planet, and our polity grapples with it all.  It would be surprising indeed if America were not also considered a troubled nation, inflicting and incurring heartbreaking trauma every day in this imperfect world.  But America’s fate is also a stroke of exceptional luck and opportunity.The message for Americans to send the modernizing, globalizing...

Enlarge ImageAdaptive behavior? The huge variety in religious practice--including this shaman ritual in Ecuador--may be linked to infectious diseases.Credit: Reuters The same diseases that plague humanity may also drive one of the fundamental elements of human culture, a new study suggests. A statistical analysis shows an association between higher rates of infectious disease and religious diversity around the world. The findings have already sparked debate within the academic community; critics are questioning the validity of the interpretation, and supporters say that the finding could offer a new perspective on why religions exist and what role they play in society....

tripling funds for fighting AIDS around the world The Associated Press July 24, 2008 WASHINGTON: The House of Representatives voted Thursday to triple money to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis around the world, giving new life and new punch to a program credited with saving or prolonging millions of lives in Africa alone. The 303-115 vote sends the global AIDS bill to President George W. Bush for his signature. Bush, who floated the idea of a campaign against AIDS in his 2003 State of the Union speech, supports the five-year, $48 billion plan. Passage of the bill culminated a rare...

A former global warming alarmist and creator of the model that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol says that while global warming is real, there is no evidence that the main cause is carbon emissions. David Evans says that C02 emissions play - at most - a minor role. Evans writes in The Australian newspaper that if global warming was caused by C02, scientists would have found hot spots about six miles up in the earth's atmosphere over the Tropics. Evans describes those hot spots as the signature of the greenhouse effect. He says scientists have been trying to...