Rustling silk, breathtaking embroidery, frills and flounces, vast crinolines... Sharply tailored suits for dandies and elegant ball gowns for ladies… This autumn's 19th-century fashion exhibition at the Gemeente Museum in The Hague features costumes from the time of Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Eline Vere and Downton Abbey.

The analysis takes the overall prevalence of certain professions nationwide and compares the expected concentration — relative to a state's population — with how many people are actually working in those jobs in a given state. The state of Hawaii has almost 13 times as many professional dancers than would be expected based on the national average. Florida has five times more professional athletes. Indiana, home to the Purdue University Boilermakers, has more than six times as many actual, working boilermakers.

Commissioned by Rockefeller between 1958 and 1975, the tapestries were woven entirely by hand by Madame J. de la Baume Dürrbach at her studio in southern France. Enormous in scale — some as large as 9 ft. x 12 ft. — these woven works of art took between three and six months to complete.

Commercial synthesis of indigo dye replaced the plant source around 1900. Today, the jean industry uses about 40,000 tons of indigo a year. But there is a dark side. Industrial synthesis of indigo from petroleum is a "dirty" chemical process. Chemical production of indigo into an effective dye requires a chemical that becomes toxic to fish and some other aquatic life. And when sent to waste water treatment plants, it severely corrodes the piping.

Doris O'Brien writes: I never dreamed I'd be spending my retirement in a mall. Don’t get me wrong. I haven'’t become a shopaholic willing to squander my 401K distribution in the pursuit of materialism. To be more precise, I live above a mall, in a sixth floor, two-bedroom aerie with a panoramic view of Southern California’s San Gabriel mountains.

New Mexico is the only state with a 24/7 registered nurse call center that is free to all residents, whether insured or not. In operation since 2006, it has kept tens of thousands of New Mexicans out of emergency rooms and saved the state more than $68 million in health care expenses. In April, the CDC will recommend New Mexico's advice line as a national model that other states adopt during an Atlanta emergency preparedness summit.

"The exhibition reminds visitors that the key themes of Benton's mural — the heroic proletariat and modern industry — were greatly significant for artists in a contemporary international context, not only in the United States, but also in Mexico, and in France between the world wars." An array of pre-Depression types — flappers, farmers, steel workers, stock market tycoons, and others representing a cross section of American life surrounds visitors in the mural space.

Drawing from her research into the growth of asexual communities and queer studies, Stanford lecturer Karli Cerankowski is shedding light on an under-studied and misunderstood facet of human sexuality: asexuality. However, much as homosexuality was once consistently pathologized by the public, the asexual community faces similar contention.