Still Searching: SETI Pioneer Jill Tarter Talks Shutdown, Aliens

For many alien enthusiasts, Jill Tarter is synonymous with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. As the SETI Institute’s research director — and the inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character in Contact — she’s done more than anyone to raise the search for cosmic company from a fringe effort to serious science.
After receiving a TED prize in 2009, Tarter had grand plans for the Allen Telescope Array, a proposed field of 350 big-nosed radio dishes that would be the world’s only dedicated SETI telescope, as well as its most sensitive. But this week, budget cuts forced the ATA’s existing 42 dishes into hibernation mode. The rest are now just a dream.
Wired.com talked with Jill Tarter about the shutdown and what it means for the future of SETI....
The Search for the Elusive Hangover Cure

For as long as people have been drinking alcohol, they've been trying to figure out a way to avoid its woozy, nauseated, sensory-amplified aftermath. But is there really any foolproof strategy for preventing a hangover besides, say, not drinking?
Scientifically speaking, no. There is no such thing as a hangover cure. In a review of 15 clinical trials of hangover-intervention methods, a team of researchers publishing in the British Medical Journal found that not a single one worked. They concluded:...
BPA Linked to Childhood Asthma

Endocrine disruption, diabetes, obesity—to the list of ills potentially associated with exposure to the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA), you can add one more: childhood asthma. In a new study presented over the weekend at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Denver, researchers from the Penn State College of Medicine found that if pregnant women are exposed to BPA, their children may end up at a higher risk for developing asthma early in life.
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Racism on Ivy League Campus and by Alum Donald Trump Cut From Same Ugly Cloth

Black in White by Luke Chueh
Recently I've been thinking a lot about Barack Obama, Donald Trump... and Christopher Abreu.
OK, Trump and Obama you probably know about. But who's Christopher Abreu? He's a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, about to graduate this spring with honors. But last week, he wrote an op-ed in the Daily Pennsylvanian newspaper in which he made disturbing allegations about a late night incident on the West Philadelphia campus.
"I was heading home at 2 a.m.," he wrote, "which meant that students were stumbling out of bars and making their way back home as well."
He says a drunk student asked, "Where can I get some fried chicken?... You look like someone who knows where you can get fried chicken."
Abreu writes that he suggested they "try Wawa if you're hungry."
The white student yelled out to his friends, "I'm gonna go get some fried chicken! This n----- just told me where it's at!"
If those words weren't chilling enough, they remind me of something that one of the school's most famous alumni, billionaire Donald Trump, who received an undergraduate degree from Penn's Wharton School in 1968, also said this spring....
The world’s ten creepiest abandoned cities

Some cities die. The people leave, the streets go quiet, and the isolation takes on the macabre shape of a forlorn ghost-town - crumbling with haunting neglect and urban decay. From Taiwan to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, these abandoned cities lurk in the shadows of civilization. Their histories are carried in hushed whispers and futures stillborn from the day of their collapse. Some have fallen victim to catastrophe while others simply outlive their function. I think we can all agree on one thing - they are all very creepy....
The Power of Music to Ignite Hope in Haiti

Dave "Phoenix" Farrell in Camp Corail
Port Au Prince, Haiti -- As Haiti welcomes a new president, who also happens to be a musician, we started to think about the power of music to bring change to Haiti. Music has long been a source of inspiration to people and can be the perfect motivator to incite action to create a better world. As a member of a rock band and leader at the United Nations Foundation, we are a unique pair, but our goal is the same. We are committed to helping the United Nations protect Haitian women and girls from violence in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake and we are urging music fans around the world to do the same.
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‘Walking Dead’ Billboard On Funeral Parlor Angers Residents

Someone made a grave error.
A billboard for the AMC zombie show
'The Walking Dead', placed on the side of a funeral parlor has angered residents in Durham, England.
Britain's Daily Mail quoted Susan Jones, from the Willow Burn Hospice, in nearby Lanchester as saying: "There must be somewhere else they could put it that would have shown a degree of insight and sensitivity."
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