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Hongjie Dai and colleagues have developed a cheap, emissions-free device that uses a 1.5-volt battery to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen gas could be used to power fuel cells in zero-emissions vehicles."Using nickel and iron, which are cheap materials, we were able to make the electrocatalysts active enough to split water at room temperature with a single 1.5-volt battery," says Dai. By Mark Shwartz Stanford… more »

"In late August 2001, Air Transat flight 236 departed Toronto for Lisbon, Portugal with 306 passengers and crew on board. Midway over the Atlantic Ocean, the plane suddenly ran out of fuel. Everyone on board was instructed to prepare for an ocean ditching, which included a countdown to impact, loss of on-board lighting, and cabin de-pressurization." more »

Joan L. Cannon writes: I’ll always be grateful that I married a man whose leaning towards the critters was as pronounced as mine. We had space in the country for the eleven cats, ten dogs, and three horses along with guinea pigs, canaries, and other livestock. Our oversized Manx cat always tried to fit into the oval opening of a new box of Kleenex. Of course, his name was Cassius (Clay), Mohammed Ali Cat. more »

Articles: "About 1 in 5 Medicare patients is discharged from hospice care alive, whether due to patients' informed choice, a change in their condition, or inappropriate actions by the hospice to save on hospitalization costs related to terminal illness"; "End-of-life measures are limited in capturing caregiver assessment of the quality of EOL care"; "To provide a more thorough assessment of end-of-life care, we analyzed Medicare claims data ... to document places of care and health care transitions ... in the last months of life." more »