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By Ayesha Rascoe and Anna Driver WASHINGTON/HOUSTON (Reuters) - Poor management and critical mistakes by BP and its contractors led to the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, according to the final report of the largest U.S. government probe into last year's massive Gulf oil spill

Laughing with friends releases feel-good brain chemicals, which also relieve pain, new research indicates. Until now, scientists haven't proven that like exercise and other activities, laughing causes a release of so-called endorphins.

Become part of a social-networking effort to understand and fight viral threats [More]

Dear EarthTalk : Are as many cats and dogs being euthanized these days as back in the 1970s and 1980s when indiscriminate breeding led to explosions in pet populations? -- Mary H., Knoxville, Tenn. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the leading non-profit devoted to animal welfare, reports that in the 1970s American shelters euthanized between 12 and 20 million cats and dogs every year at a time when there were 67 million pets in U.S

By Ed Yong of Nature magazine The iconic Nile crocodile actually comprises two different species -- and they are only distantly related.

Text by Jeanne Garbarino, animation and images by Perrin Ireland.

September 1961 Nerve Cells Talking [More]

Inventors are coming up with many advertising novelties: small mechanical toys made by various companies to advertise some kind of product or service. [More]

The little black boxes in airplanes provide useful information after a crash has taken place. Now researchers have devised a way to use black box info from planes that do not crash--to help prevent accidents from ever happening. Some airlines already use a program that checks 88 flight parameters in the black box.

Quick update on the Bastrop, TX fires. [More]

Some people may be protected from the hearing loss that often accompanies aging: yes, musicians. Scientists gave hearing tests to 74 musicians and 89 non-musicians

The market for at least one class of vital drug seems to have gone haywire.

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You've probably seen QR tags thousands of times, from advertisements in the subway to coupon flyer in the mail to products in the supermarket. They look like stamp-size bar codes, a grid of small black-and-white rectangles and squares, usually with bigger black squares in the corners.