Author: EasyReadHeadlines.com

Do we really have free will when it comes to eating? It’s a vexing question that is at the heart of why so many people find it so difficult to stick to a diet.To get answers, one neuroscientist, Harvey J. Grill of the University of Pennsylvania, turned to rats and asked what would happen if he removed all of their brains except their brainstems. The brainstem controls basic functions like heart rate and breathing. But the animals could not smell, could not see, could not remember.Would they know when they had consumed enough calories?To find out, Dr. Grill dripped liquid…

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Founded by Conrad Hilton, the hotel magnate, the Hilton Foundation is one of the biggest financial backers of Catholic sisters’ work around the world, and has given roughly $28.5 million to Vatican-led initiatives, including Vatican departments, since 2020.Francis saw donors as vital partners. He looked to them not only to fund the causes dear to him but also to plug the Vatican’s creaky finances. In February, while the pope was recovering from a near-death bout of double pneumonia, he created the Commissio de Donationibus pro Sancta Sede, a committee to fund-raise directly for the curia, or the Vatican’s governing hierarchy,…

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The life and legacy of Pope Francis — a pontiff who defied easy definition and led the Roman Catholic Church through a dozen years of different phases and contradictions — are not easy to fit into a single homily.But that was the task for Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the dean of the College of Cardinals, on Saturday.“He was a pope among the people, with an open heart toward everyone,” Cardinal Re said beside Francis’ coffin from the steps of St. Peter’s Square. “He was also a pope attentive to the signs of the times and what the Holy Spirit was…

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The melting Arctic icecap. Record-smashing wildfires across several provinces. A country that, on average, is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world.And yet, as Canadians go to the polls Monday, climate change isn’t even among the top 10 issues for voters, according to recent polling.“That’s just not what this election is about,” said Jessica Green, a political scientist at the University of Toronto who focuses on climate issues.What the election is about, nearly everyone agrees, is choosing a leader who can stand up to Donald J. Trump. The American president has been threatening Canada with a…

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Oasis have officially reformed – with brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher performing together for the first known time in 16 years. Ahead of their series of concerts this summer, The Sun newspaper reports that the Gallaghers took to the stage in top secret at a London working men’s club. Both brothers were seen arriving ahead of filming a set of songs, to be included in a promotional film for their upcoming reunion tour. The newspaper reports that locals in Stoke Newington, north London, complained about the noise being made by the hitmakers as they took over the Mildmay club on…

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As if 630 home runs and a trip to the Hall of Fame were not enough, Ken Griffey Jr. has taken up a new activity since he retired in 2010: photography.Most recently he was spotted taking pictures at the Masters where he captured an image of the winner, Rory McIlroy, celebrating on his knees that spread quickly online. But Griffey, a.k.a. the Kid, has been shooting for years in the sporting and non-sporting realms.“Because I played baseball, then I’m not allowed to do anything else?” Griffey, 55, said in an interview. “They see me as one thing; that’s not necessarily…

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Something to look forward to: Computex looks set to be the battleground where Nvidia and AMD reveal their mainstream GPUs from the latest generation. Nvidia’s quiet unveiling of the RTX 5060 Ti and 5060 has sparked suspicion that it wants to downplay the 8GB VRAM on both cards. Nvidia told board partners it will launch the RTX 5060 on May 19, anonymous sources told VideoCardz. Reviews will go live the same day, likely giving customers little time to weigh third-party benchmarks before buying what may become the most popular card in the Blackwell lineup. The company revealed full specifications earlier…

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Food poisoning isn’t an experience you’re likely to forget — and now, scientists know why. A study published April 2 in Nature has unraveled neural circuitry in mice that makes food poisoning so memorable. “We’ve all experienced food poisoning at some point … And not only is it terrible in the moment, but it leads us to not eat those foods again,” says Christopher Zimmerman of Princeton University. Luckily, developing a distaste for foul food doesn’t take much practice — one ill-fated encounter with an undercooked enchilada or contaminated hamburger is enough, even if it takes hours or days for symptoms…

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