Once again this summer, Crystal Cruises mixes politics with pleasure. Husband and wife James Carville and Mary Matalin, returning lecturers for the cruise line, will present their opposing political views on the 2008 election onboard the Crystal Serenity as it plies the Adriatic and Mediterranean seas from Venice, Italy, to Rome. SET A COURSE FOR POLITICS - Crystal Cruises is offering more than just Old World cruising this summer. As part of its Crystal Visions ... [full story]

A joint English-Canadian research team has discovered genetic markers that can identify people predisposed toward developing Type 2 diabetes. The group believes these discoveries will help them to understand up to 70 percent of the disease's genetic background, and can help prevent people from developing Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease. The research is published online in the journal Nature. Led by scientists from Imperial College London and Canada's McGill University, ... [full story]

It's supposed to get downright spooky after a while. Except it doesn't. Animal-control guy - that is, dogcatcher - Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) starts reading a tattered little self-published novel called "The Number 23" that his wife, Agatha (Virginia Madsen), picked up in a used bookstore. 'THE NUMBER 23' - Virginia Madsen and Danny Huston are featured in the drama 'The Number 23.' CNS Photo courtesy of Christine Loss. Eerily, the plot of the book ... [full story]

It's supposed to get downright spooky after a while. Except it doesn't. Animal-control guy - that is, dogcatcher - Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) starts reading a tattered little self-published novel called "The Number 23" that his wife, Agatha (Virginia Madsen), picked up in a used bookstore. 'THE NUMBER 23' - Virginia Madsen and Danny Huston are featured in the drama 'The Number 23.' CNS Photo courtesy of Christine Loss. Eerily, the plot of the book ... [full story]

"Petropolis" by Anya Ulinich; Viking; 325 pages; $25. Life in Asbestos 2, a dreary, crumbling Siberian town in the dreary, crumbling Soviet Union, wasn't going to hold back young Sasha Goldberg. Not if her mother had anything to say about it, and her mother had something to say about everything. "Children of the intelligentsia don't just come home in the afternoon and engage in idiocy," she tells her daughter. Two problems: 1) The Goldbergs' membership ... [full story]

Chimps in Sen­e­gal are reg­u­lar­ly mak­ing and us­ing spears to hunt oth­er, small pri­ma­tes, with­out hu­man help, ac­cord­ing to re­search led by an an­thro­po­l­o­gist. It’s the first study to re­port reg­u­lar tool use by non-hu­mans while hunt­ing oth­er ver­te­brates, ac­cord­ing to the U.S. Na­tion­al Ge­o­graph­ic So­ci­e­ty, which helped fund the work. A bush­ba­by (Otole­mur gar­netti) was a re­ported vic­tim of a spear-wielding chimp. (Im­age cour­te­sy U.S. Nat'l Hu­man Ge­nome Inst.) Anthropologist Jill Pruetz of Io­wa State ... [full story]

On Thursday Bend Memorial Clinic laid off about 20 workers in an effort to control costs and resource management, officials said. Bend Memorial Clinic has chosen to undergo an internal review of clinic operations and cost management to improve the overall operations of the clinic and to reduce the cost of providing high quality healthcare for the community.  The clinic has designed a detailed plan that will address the way in which it delivers healthcare ... [full story]

Raveta, a leader in innovative collaboration solutions, announced the release of Audio Fabric, the world's first service that enables musicians to play together live over the Internet using any type of instrument-acoustic, electric, MIDI, or voice. Musicians in different locations can play together as if they are in the same room using their ordinary broadband Internet connections. Audio Fabric also enables musicians to find each other, record their sessions, store sessions in a band archive, ... [full story]

A high-pitched, shrill whistle rumbles from deep inside the chest of a majestic bull elk (Cervus elaphus) and echoes through the aspen-dotted hills in the evening's final light. The sound, now as recognizable to millions of Americans as the animal that produced it, could mean lots of things: a long-distance call to a prospective mate or a warning to intruding bulls to stay away. But for those whose hairs still stand on end when they ... [full story]

New Survey Highlights the Importance of Health and Fitness During Preconception and Pregnancy According to BabyCenter, the leading online resource for new and expectant parents, a majority of women increase their focus on health, fitness and nutrition once they become a mother, than before they planned to conceive and/or had a child. New research shows approximately 65 percent of women exercise more or try to exercise more since becoming mothers, and 82 percent reported eating ... [full story]