http://www.redorbit.com General http://www.redorbit.com/modules/news/images/tools/rss_logo.gif http://www.redorbit.com Authorities in Virginia say a man used a cell phone to record himself stealing iPods and charity money from a Sears store.Police said June 22 security camera footage from the Greenbrier Mall store in Chesapeake recorded a man with a T-shirt over his head stealing nine iPods and two jugs of Heroes at Home donations for needy military families at about 9:45 p.m. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1714956/police_man_recorded_own_burglary/index.html?source=r_general Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:30:00 -0500 General The United States' Independence Day celebrations bring an annual warning from doctors -- leave the fireworks to professionals. Fourth of July fireworks always draw a crowd but those beautiful bursts of color can lead to catastrophic injuries if not used with care, Dr. James C. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1714241/surgeons_leave_fireworks_to_professionals/index.html?source=r_general Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:00:00 -0500 General A Florida woman is singing the praises of a man who pried open the jaws of a pit bull that was mauling her 6-year-old granddaughter.Patricia Smith said her granddaughter, Nakaylah, was demonstrating how she could ride a bike without training wheels Thursday in her Fort Lauderdale neighborhood when the next-door neighbor's dog broke free from a chain that was binding him to a tree and attacked the young girl, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Friday.Smith said Mark Almy, a city beach maintenance supervisor, came running down the street barefoot when he heard the girl's screams and pried open the jaws of the dog while an unidentified teenager who also rushed to help pulled on the dog's chain.I don't know how that man pried that dog off of my granddaughter, Smith said. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1712382/man_pried_open_dogs_jaws_to_free_girl_6/index.html?source=r_general Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:25:00 -0500 General Forty-nine percent of U.S. adults admit body insecurity keeps them from engaging in warm-weather activities such as swimming, a survey indicates. The survey of 1,000 adults by ZoneDiet.com reveals 70 percent of Americans are self-conscious about the way their body looks during the summer. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1710520/survey_summer_creates_swimsuit_anxiety/index.html?source=r_general Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:25:00 -0500 General The supervisor of Craig Lake State Park says a growing number of visitors have been using the Michigan park's yurt, a traditional Mongolian shelter.Park Supervisor Doug Barry said numerous visitors to the 7,000-acre site have been renting the yurt installed a year and a half ago on the shores of Teddy Lake, The Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press reported Saturday.I see a lot of those adventurous young people renting them, but I also see a couple dads and a couple sons out for fishing trips, Barry said.The 16-foot diameter shelters once used by ancient Mongols can be rented for $60 a night, Barry added. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1708798/michigan_parks_seeing_rise_in_yurt_usage/index.html?source=r_general Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:15:00 -0500 General McDonald's Corp. said it would continue a massive McCafe marketing campaign that has helped push it to No. 2 in a survey of U.S. coffee drinkers.A BIGResearch survey of 8,000 consumers in May ranked McDonald's in front of Dunkin' Donuts, but behind Starbucks as the coffee house most U.S. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1707863/mccafe_push_will_continue_mcdonalds_says/index.html?source=r_general Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:30:00 -0500 General The world's largest collection of inverts, stamps with upside-down images, goes on the auction block this week in New York City.The collection of 3,000 stamps belonged to Robert Cunliffe, an investment adviser who lived in Mount Lebanon, Pa., until his death last year, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1707399/big_collection_of_inverts_on_sale/index.html?source=r_general Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:35:00 -0500 General A U.S. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1705976/most_older_adults_dont_get_8_hours_sleep/index.html?source=r_general Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:55:00 -0500 General The question of whether a California sports agent really has the suit O.J. Simpson wore at his 1995 acquittal is set to be answered in a Los Angeles courtroom.Mike Gilbert of Fresno, an estranged friend of Simpson and author of How I Helped O.J. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1704766/oj_suit_sought_by_goldmans_may_be_fake/index.html?source=r_general Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:50:00 -0500 General Taking a vacation and getting away from work is not just fun, it's important for mental health, a U.S. psychiatry researcher said.Dr. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1704460/its_important_to_give_brain_a_vacation/index.html?source=r_general Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:50:00 -0500 General What dog owner has not come home to a broken vase or other valuable items and a guilty-looking dog slouching around the house? By ingeniously setting up conditions where the owner was misinformed as to whether their dog had really committed an offense, Alexandra Horowitz, Assistant Professor from Barnard College in New York, uncovered the origins of the "guilty look" in dogs in the recently published "Canine Behavior and Cognition" Special Issue of Elsevier's Behavioral Processes.Horowitz was able to show that the human tendency to attribute a "guilty look" to a dog was not due to whether the dog was indeed guilty. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1703954/what_really_causes_a_dogs_guilty_look/index.html?source=r_general Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:55:00 -0500 General Web 2.0 became the one-millionth word or phrase in the English language on Wednesday, Reuters reported.Although some linguists slammed it as nonsense and a stunt, a U.S.-based language monitoring group saw fit to add it to the English lexicon.The Global Language Monitor said Web 2.0 appeared over 25,000 times in searches and was widely accepted, making it the legitimate, one-millionth word.The group uses a math formula to track the frequency of words and phrases in print and electronic media.While it started out as a technical term meaning the next generation of World Wide Web products and services, the group said Web 2.0 had crossed into far wider circulation in the last six months.However, other linguists have called the list unscientific and nothing more than pure publicity, arguing it was impossible to count English words in use or to agree on how many times a word must be used before it is officially accepted.Most linguists agree that the number of compound words, verbs and obsolete terms, complicates attempts to classify the language and there are no set rules for such a count as there is no certified arbiter of what constitutes a legitimate English word.Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, called the classification pure fraud.“... http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1703297/web_20_named_onemillionth_english_word/index.html?source=r_general Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:20:00 -0500 General Men with average relationships with their partners have more stress at work than those in good or bad relationships, a Swedish survey finds.Ann-Christine Andersson Arnten, a graduate student at the University of Gothenburg, studied 900 men and women for five years, The Local reported. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1701450/study_men_stressed_by_average_love_lives/index.html?source=r_general Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:20:00 -0500 General Boys who carry a particular variation of the gene Monoamine oxidase A (MAOA), sometimes called the "warrior gene," are more likely not only to join gangs but also to be among the most violent members and to use weapons, according to a new study from The Florida State University that is the first to confirm an MAOA link specifically to gangs and guns.Findings apply only to males. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1701036/warrior_gene_linked_to_gang_membership_weapon_use/index.html?source=r_general Fri, 05 Jun 2009 11:20:00 -0500 General U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is likely to lose money when he sells his Larchmont, N.Y. home, a real estate agent said.Geithner and his wife, Carole, put their five-bedroom Tudor home on the market in February, when they moved to Washington, D.C. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1700195/geithners_ny_home_waits_for_buyer/index.html?source=r_general Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:50:00 -0500 General U.S. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1699280/airline_pet_policy_raises_allergy_concerns/index.html?source=r_general Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:45:00 -0500 General U.S. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1697398/book_objections_on_the_rise/index.html?source=r_general Sun, 31 May 2009 18:50:00 -0500 General English is about to get its millionth word, a Texas wordsmith says.Paul JJ Payack, president of the Global Language Monitor, has calculated the millionth word will join the language June 10, 2009, at 10:22 a.m. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1696701/wordsmith_waiting_for_milllionth_word/index.html?source=r_general Thu, 28 May 2009 23:20:00 -0500 General Burger King, the Florida-based fast-food giant, has added three Kids Meals designed to be lower in fat, sodium and calories.The meals are part of its Positive Steps program and brings the number of choices to four, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Wednesday. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1695687/burger_king_adds_3_kids_meals/index.html?source=r_general Wed, 27 May 2009 14:05:00 -0500 General The number of children and adolescents treated for baseball-related injuries in hospitals decreased 25 percent from 1994-2006, U.S. researchers say. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1695144/us_youth_baseball_injuries_have_dropped/index.html?source=r_general Wed, 27 May 2009 01:25:00 -0500 General Despite calamities from economic recessions, wars and famine to a flu epidemic afflicting the Earth, a new study from the University of Kansas and Gallup indicates that humans are by nature optimistic.The study, to be presented Sunday, May 24, 2009, at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in San Francisco, found optimism to be universal and borderless.Data from the Gallup World Poll drove the findings, with adults in more than 140 countries providing a representative sample of 95 percent of the world's population. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1694225/study_people_by_nature_are_universally_optimistic/index.html?source=r_general Sun, 24 May 2009 15:25:00 -0500 General A new study shows how the behavior of dogs has been misunderstood for generations: in fact using misplaced ideas about dog behavior and training is likely to cause rather than cure unwanted behavior.  The findings challenge many of the dominance related interpretations of behavior and training techniques suggested by current TV dog trainers.Contrary to popular belief, aggressive dogs are NOT trying to assert their dominance over their canine or human “pack”, according to research published by academics at the University of Bristol’s Department of Clinical Veterinary Sciences in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research.The researchers spent six months studying dogs freely interacting at a Dogs Trust rehoming center, and reanalyzing data from studies of feral dogs, before concluding that individual relationships between dogs are learnt through experience rather than motivated by a desire to assert “dominance”.The paper “Dominance in domestic dogs – useful construct or bad habit?” reveals that dogs are not motivated by maintaining their place in the pecking order of their pack, as many well-known dog trainers preach.Far from being helpful, the academics say, training approaches aimed at “dominance reduction” vary from being worthless in treatment to being actually dangerous and likely to make behaviors worse. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1693129/using_dominance_to_explain_dog_behavior_is_old_hat/index.html?source=r_general Thu, 21 May 2009 08:35:00 -0500 General Researchers at Mayo Clinic compared two popular television shows, CSI and CSI: Miami, to actual U.S. homicide data, and discovered clear differences between media portrayals of violent deaths versus actual murders. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1691853/popular_tv_shows_inaccurately_portray_violent_crime/index.html?source=r_general Tue, 19 May 2009 13:35:00 -0500 General  Comparative effectiveness research is generating buzz these days, with the recent economic stimulus package allocating $1.1 billion for these types of studies. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1706609/expert_lists_5_steps_to_boost_impact_of_comparative_effectiveness/index.html?source=r_general Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:04:40 -0500 General An impending ban on smoking in North Carolina bars and restaurants could put hookah bars out of business, one owner says.Hookah Bliss owner Adam Bliss said if hookah bar owners are unable to earn an exemption from state officials, they will face the possibility of losing their businesses when the ban goes into effect this coming January, The (Raleigh) News & Observer reported Monday. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1697856/hookah_bars_facing_closure_in_n_carolina/index.html?source=r_general Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:45:00 -0500 General