Science, Health and Technology

A new report from the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the Natural Resources Defense Council shows that the frequency of severe storms across the Midwest has doubled over the past 50 years.

The report analyzed precipitation data from more than 200 weather stations in eight Midwestern states.

It found that for the period from 1961 to 2011, the frequency of days with more than 3 inches of rain increased by upwards of 80 percent in both Illinois and Missouri, and by more than 100 percent across the Midwest as a whole.

In Missouri state prisons, about 60 percent of inmates have kids. That's 18,000 moms and dads behind bars – and tens of thousands of kids on the other side. To help those parents and kids connect, volunteers make their way through the metal detectors at Missouri state prisons with big tubs of blank tapes and CDs, stamped envelopes, and lots of children's books. 

Personal technology is getting cheaper, better, smaller.  But have you ever tried to get fixed a broken cell phone or mp3 player?  When I broke my portable USB flash drive, I brought it to a computer repair technician, unsure if he’d simply turn me away or not.  Those little “thumb” drives are just so small.  No moving parts really, they’re all circuitry.  Turns out that getting it fixed wasn’t an impossibility.  I just had to go to some unusual places.