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The US government is holding contests with big prizes for scientists who can develop cars that drive themselves. What’s the rationale behind this: Avoiding auto accidents? Developing jeeps and tanks that are not vulnerable to roadside bombs? Exploration of the moon and Mars? Keep reading to learn more.

In BBC news, Jon Stewart reports that a the winner has been announced in a California race for robotic vehicles. According to Stewart, the winner?a modified Chevy Tahoe called “Boss”?”successfully drove around an urban environment, avoiding other cars, and covering 60 miles in less than six hours, all without any human control.”
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No matter how much the government extols them, we’ve warned you before that we’re being conned about corn, and now a UN expert agrees and says that growing crops to produce biofuels is a “crime against humanity” that will bring on world hunger.

In BBC News, Grant Ferrett reports that UN expert Jean Ziegler says that the growth in the production of biofuels has already pushed the price of certain crops to record levels.

Ziegler has called for a 5 year ban on the production of biofuels because by that time, according to Ferrett, ?technological advances would enable the use of agricultural waste, such as corn cobs and banana leaves, rather than crops themselves to produce fuel.? In other words, we can burn our GARBAGE instead of our food.
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Babies know a lot more than we used to think they did. And ladies: if you want to have lots of them, mate with a man who has a deep voice.

In LiveScience.com, Robin Lloyd reports that scientists have recently learned that babies can pick out their native language from a foreign one when they are only a few days old.

Speaking of voices, LiveScience reports that men with deep voices have more children, probably because studies have shown that women are more attracted to men with deep-pitched voices.

Art credit: freeimages.co.uk
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First we heard that the oceans are no longer sucking up CO2 the way they used to?now it turns out that the FORESTS aren’t either! Plus forest fires, like the recent ones in California, pump tons of carbon dioxide INTO the atmosphere.

In the Nov. 1 edition of the Independent, Steve Connor reports that “the sprawling forests of the northern hemisphere which extend from China and Siberia to Canada and Alaska are in danger of becoming a gigantic source of carbon dioxide rather than being a major ‘sink’ that helps to offset man-made emissions of the greenhouse gas.” Why is this? The risk of fire. Large-scale fires in a western or southeastern state can pump as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in a few weeks as the state’s entire motor vehicle traffic does in a year.read more