In Moscow, the country’s largest collection of humanities and social sciences caught fire Jan. 30 at the Academic Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences (INION). INION contains millions of records, including 14.2 million texts in both ancient and modern European and Asian languages, some 400 years old. Authorities said the fire may have destroyed 15% of the library’s collection, or about 2 million documents.   read more

It’s good that peer pressure caused the firing range to come down, because Florida has a law that says municipalities can’t stop such a thing. “My first reaction to one of these cases was, ‘Heck no, that can’t be right. That has to be unlawful,’” said Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. “After researching it, we realized, ‘Sheesh, it really is legal.’” Carannante said he couldn’t afford the $20 cost of going to a gun range to shoot. “My intentions were never to instill fear in my neighbors," he insisted.   read more

Animal testing could someday be replaced by advanced microchips currently under development. A German research group has created a “synthetic organism on a miniature chip” that can simulate a human body for the purposes of testing new medicines. If successful, it would eliminate the need to test new therapies on animals, which are currently used at the early stages of drug testing. Such a development “would be nothing short of a revolution to the pharmaceutical industry,” said SingularityHub.   read more

There is only one state in the nation where socialism reigns in the electricity industry and private ownership of utilities is nowhere to be found. And it’s not California, New York or any other “blue” state. No, the distinction of having nothing but nonprofit utilities resides in the very red state of Nebraska, where conservatism runs throughout the government. The state has 121 publicly-owned utilities, 10 cooperatives and 30 public power districts that serve 1.8 million residents.   read more

Looking at the death records of 32,000 adults, researchers found those who identified as conservatives were 6% more likely to die during the study period, which covered 15 years. The results were surprising because earlier studies have shown that Republicans claimed to be healthier and happier, which often is accepted as a key indicator of longer life. Party affiliation was examined in the new study, too, and there it showed independents lived longer than both Republicans or Democrats.   read more

Emoji, also known as emoticons, have become so prevalent in electronic communications that their use is being cited as evidence in trials and arrests. In Pennsylvania, a man was convicted of threatening his wife via Facebook. In his defense, he cited his use of an emoticon indicating he was kidding. In Brooklyn, a teenager was arrested after police saw his threatening statement on Facebook, alongside emoticon images of guns. Police went to his home, where they found marijuana and a firearm.   read more

Army Major Erik Burris, who had been responsible for supervising sexual assault cases by soldiers, was himself convicted Sunday of crimes including rape and forcible sodomy. Burris was found guilty of two counts of rape, forcible sodomy, four counts of assault, and disobeying an order from a superior officer. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, forfeiture of pay and allowances and dismissal from the Army. He had multiple victims.   read more

When Judge Michael Schumacher ran out of potential jurors for a trial, he instructed the sheriff, Ron Cramer, to round up more people. Cramer then hit the streets of the 65,000-population city, and using a little known law, ordered some residents to come with him to the courthouse. The sheriff cited the “Insufficient Jurors” statute on the books, which authorizes police to grab any local resident 18 years old with no felony convictions to serve on a jury if a pool runs dry.   read more

Sondra Arquiett sued the government after learning photos of her were part of a social media sting operation run by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Federal agents had obtained the images after confiscating her phone in 2010 as part of a drug arrest, which resulted in Arquiett pleading guilty to a drug conspiracy charge. But she never gave the DEA permission to use her photos to snare other people she knew who were using or trafficking in illegal drugs.   read more

The 11 unsolved murders required considerable work on the part of sculptors to recreate what the people might have looked like before their deaths. All of the cases “had all met ugly deaths and were found as skeletons in desolate places across New York City — train tracks, wooded areas, in a basement,” wrote The New York Times. In some cases, the bodies were dismembered and the skulls crushed. This work is a last resort for investigators.   read more

Same-sex marriage has gone from being a hard-won right to a requirement for many gay couples. With many states now authorizing (or at least not banning) gay marriage, some employers are phasing out domestic partnerships and telling couples they have to get married in order to keep their benefits. The way companies see it, there’s no point in keeping domestic partnership rules if marriage is legal. However, this could have implications for heterosexual couples' domestic arrangements.   read more

Millennials continue to grow in number, even though the generation was born from 1981 to 1997, thanks to the continuing flow of immigrants, particularly younger foreign residents, into the country. The generation’s numbers will reach more than 75 million this year, surpassing the 74.9 million of Boomers, whose totals will continue to shrink as more die off in the coming years. The Millennial population won’t peak for another 21 years, when it will reach 81.1 million by 2036.   read more

The Solar Foundation, which supports solar power, claims in a new report that more than 173,000 people had solar-related jobs as of last year. The coal industry had only about 93,000 workers. Job growth in solar has been phenomenal, expanding by 20% or more in each of the last two years. In 2014, it added 31,000 new jobs and solar businesses plan to add another 36,000 employees this year. One out of 78 jobs created in the U.S.over the past year were created by the solar industry,   read more

A month after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said it did not have an objection, in principle, to Indian tribes growing marijuana on their trust-held land, Mendocino, California’s Pinoleville Pomo Nation announced it was building a $10-million greenhouse facility on its 99-acre rancheria in Ukiah. . FoxBarry Cos. LLC announced that it was putting up $30 million as part of the United Cannabis deal to develop the growing facilities.   read more

If a new study is an indication, global warming will make human lives less productive. Tatyana Deryugina and Solomon M. Hsiang of the National Bureau of Economic Research used data collected from counties throughout the 48 contiguous U.S. states and compared increases in temperature with the output of human production. They determined that as things heat up, people slow down.   read more

Jailer is an elected office in Kentucky, the only state where that’s the case. The jailer is responsible for maintaining the county jail, transporting prisoners to court and other related duties. But in 41 of Kentucky’s counties, there is no jail. Those counties with small populations use regional jails to house prisoners. So what do those jailers do with their time? In the case of Jeanette Miller Hughes, who received $69,000 a year as Perry County’s jailer, it’s babysitting her grandchild.   read more