Itching for a good after-school science experiment? Researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey have created a homemade bedbug trap using a plastic cat-food dish, an insulated jug and some dry-ice pellets. According to Wan-Tien Tsai, who reported her findings in December at the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America, the dry-ice-and-thermos combo captured the bloodsucking critters in an infested apartment just as effectively as, if not more so than, equipment used by professional exterminators. The most ...

"Gifted" researcher is punished for faking data "Dr. Darsee is clearly one of the most remarkable young men in American medicine. It is not extravagant to say that he became a legendary figure during his year as chief resident in medicine at Grady Memorial Hospital." With that exuberant commendation, Cardiologist Paul Walter of Emory University endorsed the selection of his former colleague John Darsee for one of the biggest plums in academic medicine: an appointment to the Harvard Medical School ...

In her May 25 "class day" speech to graduating seniors at Harvard, comedian Amy Poehler joked that postcollege life is like "a heist that requires good drivers, an explosives expert, a hot girl who doubles as a master of disguise." The line got some chuckles, but it also struck a nerve. For college grads, nabbing a good job in this economy may seem as far-fetched as pulling off a successful bank robbery. A recent study from Rutgers University analyzing data ...

No one better personified the vitality of the American Dream in the second half of the 20th century than Sam Walton. A scrappy, sharp-eyed bantam rooster of a boy, Walton grew up in the Depression dust bowl of Oklahoma and Missouri, where he showed early signs of powerful ambition: Eagle Scout at an improbably young age and quarterback of the Missouri state-champion high school football team. He earned money to help his struggling family by throwing newspapers and selling milk ...

It's past Memorial Day, and while some high school seniors are sporting new college sweatshirts, others are still in purgatory on a waitlist. The bad news? The more time passes, the lower the odds of getting off the list. But the good news is, if a student is on a waitlist, he or she is still in the game. Here are five things to know about this particularly mysterious aspect of college admissions. 1. Waitlists do move ...

They may not have agreed on whether to skip school, take the day off work or refrain from all commerce today, but the hundreds of thousands of peaceful protestors who turned out in major cities across the country on Monday clearly conveyed their message that immigrants are essential to the U.S. economy and deserve the right to continue living and working here. With rallies in more than 50 cities from Las Vegas to Miami, the day of ...

In an episode of the 1950s TV show Superman, a school bus full of kids is threatened with disaster as it nearly topples over a cliff, when — whoosh — the Man of Steel flies in and pushes the bus to safety. That was the fantasy that Geoffrey Canada, the South Bronx–bred boy who became a Harvard-trained education entrepreneur, hoped for as a child. All it would take to save schoolkids was muscle and a miracle. But ...

"Beans??" The girl said. She was sitting near the end of a long table in the cafeteria at Lionel Wilson College Preparatory Academy, a charter school in Oakland, Calif. There were about a dozen middle schoolers in all, taste testing new school-lunch ideas. The girl was a tough customer, by far the toughest at the table. The offending item? A salad with fresh greens, roasted pumpkin seeds, corn, shredded cheese and black beans, tossed in organic ranch dressing. Amy ...

This fall, young girls in China's southern Guangdong province will be learning a new subject in school: how to avoid becoming a mistress. Although Chairman Mao kept a stable of women at his disposal, extramarital peccadilloes were frowned upon during China's more fervent socialist years. But as economic reforms have helped Guangdong become one of the nation's wealthiest regions, the province has been beset by a flood of ernai, literally, "second breast," as mistresses are commonly known ...

In 11th grade, Allante Rhodes spent 50 minutes a day in a Microsoft Word class at Anacostia Senior High School in Washington. He was determined to go to college, and he figured that knowing Word was a prerequisite. But on a good day, only six of the school's 14 computers worked. He never knew which ones until he sat down and searched for a flicker of life on the screen. "It was like Russian roulette," says Rhodes, a tall young ...