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In Anne’s new diary, she writes: “I imagine most of us are in the same boat: whether or not we think we should have invaded Iraq in the first place, we can’t figure out how we’ll be able to leave. So when I read the headline ‘How to Get Out of Iraq,’ I grabbed the latest copy of The New York Review of Books. In it, Peter Galbraith says the problem is that there are actually 3 Iraqs.”

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The “Mozart Effect” refers to the fact that listening to Mozart?but not any other music?has been shown to improve learning and memory. Now scientists have found that Mozart’s music actually changes the connections between brain cells.

Emily Singer writes in New Scientist that neuroscientist Fran Rauscher discovered the Effect in 1993, after college students who listened to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major for 10 minutes performed better on reasoning tests than students who listened to other music or none at all. Patients with Alzheimer’s disease perform better on social tasks after listening to a Mozart sonata, and playing Mozart for epileptics suppresses the electrical activity associated with seizures, while other kinds of music don’t have the same effect.read more

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Only about half the meat and poultry that was recalled in the U.S. because of suspected health hazards between 1998 and 2002 was actually recovered by the manufacturers. This is especially worrisome now that Mad Cow Disease has been discovered here. Researcher Neal Hooker says, “Manufacturers should have a better success rate, but they don’t.”

New regulations went into effect between 1998 and 2000, so when Hooker examined the latest recall records, he says, “I was hoping we would see that the more hazardous cases?would be more quickly acted upon and have higher recovery rates. But the answer was no.
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About 3.3 million Americans have obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and John C. Dvorak of PC Magazine thinks they’re the ones spreading most of the computer viruses. He says, “With millions of compulsive people out there getting messages that say things like ‘Open the important attachment!’?you don’t need anything more than that simple demand to propagate a virus. All you need is?a note that says, ‘Open me!’ and millions of poor souls with OCD will open it.”
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