Although Lithuania’s growth has been impressive, inequality is high, the risk of poverty is one of the highest of European countries, and life expectancy is comparatively low and strongly dependent on socio-economic background.

The current Polish framework for fighting foreign bribery is still inadequate to fully meet foreign bribery risks resulting from Poland’s growing economy, says a new OECD report.

Although Lithuania’s growth has been impressive, inequality is high, the risk of poverty is one of the highest of European countries, and life expectancy is comparatively low and strongly dependent on socio-economic background.

In August 2015, a newspaper published a story about Sam Cookney’s commute to work. Pretty boring, one would think, as long commutes are nothing new for most of us. However, Sam’s story is not so common. He works in London and commutes, several times per month, from Barcelona!

Respected breeders will perform DNA screening but potential owners could be duped into buying unhealthy pets from unscrupulous puppy farms abroad.

Respected breeders will perform DNA screening but potential owners could be duped into buying unhealthy pets from unscrupulous puppy farms abroad.

Lea Michele ensured all eyes were on her growing bump on Saturday. The 33-year-old treated herself to self-care day at home where she shared her favorite products with her fans.

Many return for better medical treatment amid fears of being stranded abroad

X-ray reflectivity (XRR) is a powerful and popular scattering technique that can give valuable insight into the growth behavior of thin films. This study shows how a simple artificial neural network model can be used to determine the thickness, roughness and density of thin films of different organic semiconductors [diindenoperylene, copper(II) phthalocyanine and α-sexithiophene] on silica from their XRR data with millisecond computation time and with minimal user input or a priori knowledge. For a large experimental data set of 372 XRR curves, it is shown that a simple fully connected model can provide good results with a mean absolute percentage error of 8–18% when compared with the results obtained by a genetic least mean squares fit using the classical Parratt formalism. Furthermore, current drawbacks and prospects for improvement are discussed.

A new study published in the Feb. 2 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that forests in the Eastern United […]

The post Smithsonian ecologists discover forests are growing at a faster rate appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

When you look at fast growing private companies in the U.S., you need look no further than a small city next to Los Angeles International Airport.

Steve Julian: Business analyst Mark Lacter, tell us about the company that's based in El Segundo.

Mark Lacter: It's called Fuhu, Steve - that might ring a bell with some parents because Fuhu is the maker of the Nabi.  The Nabi is an Android tablet for kids, and it's a very cool device that mimics a lot of the capabilities of regular tablet, including the ability to play games and get onto the Web (with controls that parents are able to set up).  Last year, they sold 1.2 million Nabis, and that helped push the El Segundo company to the very top of Inc. magazine's list of fastest-growing businesses.  That's number one on a list of 5,000 companies, with a three-year growth rate of 42,148 percent.  Or, to put it another way, company revenue was $279,000 in 2009; it was almost $118 million in 2012.  Now, by the standards of an Apple or a Samsung, those are still not huge numbers -

Julian: - and maybe that explains why there's been relatively little media coverage of this company.

Lacter: It might also explain why local tech companies in general get short shrift.  Many of them are quite successful, but they're often on the small side, and they're also privately held as opposed to publicly-traded on a stock exchange.  That's one big difference from Silicon Valley, which has so many huge public corporations: Apple, Intel, HP.  L.A. County has only six Fortune 500 companies, and not a single one devoted solely to technology.  In Silicon Valley, there are 22 in the Fortune 500.

Julian: And yet, the L.A. economy has more than held its own without those large corporations.

Lacter: Matter of fact, the accounting firm PriceWaterhouse studied more than two dozen cities around the world to determine where it was easiest to do business (that's based on factors like access to labor), and what they found - somewhat surprisingly - was that L.A. ranked ahead of both San Francisco and Tokyo.  And, you can see evidence of that with the increase in venture capital money coming into all parts of L.A.  Now, it's important to keep an eye on all these up-and-coming companies because these businesses are helping generate higher-wage jobs.  And, for an area with a still-high unemployment rate - still over 10 percent in some places -- that's a big deal.

Julian: Speaking of companies, does anyone want to buy the L.A. Times?

Lacter: The answer is yes - most recently, the controlling owner of the Dodgers, Mark Walter, said he was interested in both the Times and the Chicago Tribune (though there's no way to know whether there are actual discussions taking place).  You also have several local groups, including one that involves billionaire Eli Broad, that have been interested to one degree or another.  But what was thought would be a fairly straightforward auction process has turned enormously complicated.  It's now to the point where the Tribune board has decided spin off the papers into a separate business, and that process will take until next year to complete and could preclude any sales for quite some time after that.

Julian: So, it's Limbo-land for the Times for who knows how long.

Lacter: Steve, it's not that Tribune really wants to keep the newspapers.  But, selling them off presents huge tax implications.  Also, there are assets that the potential buyers thought would be part of the package - assets that include real estate - that Tribune wants to hold onto.  So, what's left to sell are just the newspapers themselves, and frankly, they're among the least valuable properties.

Julian: Now, last week came word that the billionaire Koch brothers, who were believed to be interested in the Tribune properties, decided not to pursue a deal...

Lacter: ...that's right, they don't consider the Times or the other dailies to be economically viable.  You might recall a bit of an outcry over the prospect of having the Kochs, who are staunch conservatives, becoming the owners of these papers.  So, they're out of the picture.  But for the L.A. Times, it's really the worst of all worlds: no new owner and no vision for recasting the paper, at least in the near term.

Mark Lacter writes for Los Angeles Magazine and pens the business blog at LA Observed.com.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

As the gap in life expectancy between the highest and lowest earners in the U.S. has widened over time, high earners have disproportionately received larger lifetime benefits from government programs such as Social Security and Medicare, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Two judges appointed by President Trump to the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals prevailed Tuesday in a ruling that clears the way for the executions of four inmates.

The only dissenter in the 3-2 ruling was Judge David Tatel, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton. The judges were reviewing a lower court's injunction that had blocked the scheduled executions.

The decision was seen as a win for Trump's Justice Department, which issued new guidelines last July that would have allowed the federal government to carry out its first executions in 16 years.

The fates of the four men remain unresolved because their death sentences were sent back to the lower court for further proceedings.

In December, the U.S. Supreme Court declined the Justice Department's request to vacate the lower court's injunction that scuttled the planned executions.

At issue is the question of whether the condemned men should be put to death by the injection of only one barbiturate — pentobarbital — as called for in the Justice Department's July 2019 memo.

Many of the 28 states where the death penalty is still legal require a lethal injection cocktail containing not one but three barbiturates. Those states include Indiana, where the scheduled executions were to take place.

Pharmaceutical companies have stopped producing at least one of the three drugs used in that lethal mixture, and several botched executions have resulted from some states using untested formulas.

The 1994 Federal Death Penalty Act calls for executions to be carried out "in the manner prescribed by the law of the State in which the sentence is imposed."

Judge Gregory Katsas argues in his majority opinion that the "manner prescribed" simply refers to the method of execution rather than the protocols each state follows in carrying out each kind of execution.

"The government says that 'manner' here means 'method'," Katsas writes, "such that the FDPA regulates only the top-line choice among execution methods such as hanging, electrocution, or lethal injection. In my view, the government is correct."

Judge Neomi Rao, in a concurring opinion, argues that while the word "manner" refers not only to the method of execution, it cannot be interpreted in isolation. "It is a broad, flexible term," she says, "whose specificity depends on context."

In his dissent, Tatel says the best understanding of the 1994 statute is that it "requires federal executions to be carried out using the same procedures that states use to execute their own prisoners.

"Had Congress intended to authorize the Attorney General to adopt a uniform execution protocol," Tatel argues, "it knew exactly how to do so."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Fish farms, and other forms of aquaculture, are seen as a potential solution to meeting increasing global demand for seafood. However, according to recent research, they must reduce their reliance on wild fish for animal feed if current production levels from both aquaculture and wild fisheries are to be maintained.

Gilman, John J. (John Joseph), editor

A new study has analysed water shortages around the world over the past two millennia. Population growth has been a significant pressure on supplies and will continue to increase in threat in future. Dealing with water scarcity will therefore increasingly require improved water governance, management and policy measures, which are fully integrated into societal development.

The extent of marine litter in the Mediterranean Basin has been revealed by a new study. Researchers reviewed previous studies to show that the northwest Mediterranean Sea is a hotspot for plastic debris. They found that marine litter harmed 134 species in the Mediterranean Sea and call for more to be done to manage the growing problem of debris, especially plastics, littering the Sea.

The post Growing optimism for Aussie grain farmers appeared first on The Lead SA.

When I told people I was going to try axe throwing, I was met mostly with confused expressions. While in America the target sport has fast become a popular pastime, the UK has yet to catch up. That is about to change, however, as the world’s largest urban axe throwing company, Bad Axe, has just opened its first venue outside of North America.

The Nissan Leaf will be produced in Tennessee, in America's largest auto plant under one roof. Take a tour with me on the electric tram.

After graduating from college, Daniel Mays followed his heart back to the land and has been working to build his own small organic farm up here in Maine.

It really is important to learn to love your stuff. But that love comes so much easier when there is less stuff to love.

A well-known Chinese solar power company has filed for bankruptcy, but this may actually be a sign of health for the industry.

Check out this infographic, which breaks down the importance of organic food, how mobile usage affects purchasing, food labels and more.

A buzzworthy new discovery might help explain the alarming speed of colony collapse disorder.

SRI, the system of rice intensification, has taken agribusiness giants by surprise with its record-breaking harvests across the globe.

The space agency is trying to understand what vegetables may thrive on the red planet, and how to help them do so.

Organizers are planning a huge event to celebrate the joy of 'ginger pride.'

Hailey Dawson has a 3-D printed hand and team spirit for days.

The U.S. Green Building Council announces that a not-too-shabby 20,000 residential building projects have been bestowed with LEED for Homes certification and t

The rediscovery of this hibiscus relative in Hawaii illustrates the growing importance of drones in wildlife conservation.

The U.S. has become the pre-eminent blocker to this year's UN climate negotiations, but new scientific analysis and a growing civil society movement could force

A new report hints at the growing economic clout of renewable energy.

Kimbal Musk, an investor, philanthropist and chef, has taken his nonprofit Kitchen Community national and renamed it Big Green.

Only about 2 percent of Iceland is now forested, down from as much as 40 percent before Vikings arrived.

TckTckTck's mosaic:EARTH combines 'deep zoom' technology with social action to encourage people around the world to join in the growing sustainability movement.

Indiana elementary school teams with 'food rescue' group to turn unwanted food into weekend meals.

Japan's cube-shaped watermelons are more than just a novelty. They're easier to store in the small refrigerators typically found in Japanese homes.

New report shows major metro employment is moving further away from where people actually live. And it's worse for poor people and minorities.

Scientists have created a kind of cyborg flower: living roses with tiny electronic circuits threaded through their vascular systems.

“Down to Earth” highlights the sustainability inititaives at several of California’s wineries and opens up your sustainable wine choices.

Using images from its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, NASA reveals the moon's 'dark side' in 4K as observed by the Apollo 13 astronauts.

Farmers markets are making news for encouraging reasons. Find out what’s happening around the country.

Public campaigns designed to boost consumer interest in shopping at small and independent businesses appear to be paying off.

More and more charities say they have been helped by these 'pint-sized philanthropists' who are choosing to give rather than receive.

The world's natural rubber comes from Southeast Asia, but the company is using an unassuming Texas bush to make its rubber all-American.

Kathy Shea Mormino ditched the legal profession to become The Chicken Chick.

This video shows burrowing owls discovering the presence of a "hidden" observation camera. It doesn't end well for the camera.

Geologists studying the phenomenon say the fissure is likely a reflection of aquifer depletion.