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PASSINGS: Helen Johns Carroll
Helen Johns Carroll, 99, a swimmer who helped the U.S. women's Olympic team win gold in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay at the 1932 Summer Games in Los Angeles, died Wednesday at a nursing home in Sumter, S.C., her family said. Then known as Helen Johns, at 17 she swam the second leg of the relay on Aug. 12, 1932, at the Olympic swimming stadium adjacent to the Coliseum. The four team members — Johns, Josephine McKim, Eleanor Saville-Garatti and Helene Madison — set what was then a world record with a time of 4 minutes 38 seconds. The Dutch team won silver and the British won bronze. The current women's world record is 3:30.98, set by an Australian team Thursday at...
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PASSINGS: Helen Johns Carroll
Helen Johns Carroll, 99, a swimmer who helped the U.S. women's Olympic team win gold in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay at the 1932 Summer Games in Los Angeles, died Wednesday at a nursing home in Sumter, S.C., her family said. Then known as...
Free speech: Isn't that what college is supposed to be about?
College campuses ought to be — but often aren't — bastions of free speech. Sometimes it's students who choke off debate, as occurred last year when hecklers at Brown University drowned out a speech by New York City's police commissioner....
Giant volcano with glacier on Mars may have been a nice place for life
If life existed on Mars in the recent past, the best spot for it could have been on a giant volcano once encrusted with a glacier, according to a team of Brown University scientists using data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. ...
Oklahoma coming to terms with unprecedented surge in earthquakes
When Austin Holland was being considered for his job as the sole seismologist at the Oklahoma Geological Survey in 2009, his interviewer posed a wry question: "Are you going to be able to entertain yourself as a seismologist in Oklahoma?" ...
What college kids don't want to hear
Last week, former UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau joined a growing group of prominent public figures who have declined invitations to speak at college commencement ceremonies because of protests. Birgeneau — and the students who...
Why colleges fail at investigating and punishing sex crimes
When my mom entered the University of Oregon in the late 1950s, a "housemother" made nightly doorjamb patrols after the 11 p.m. lights-out. Dorms were strictly segregated by gender, and opportunities for drinking alcohol and having sex were minimal...
Mexico boasts a staggering genetic diversity, study shows
Writers, artists and historians have long pondered what it means to be Mexican. Now science has offered its answer, and it could change how medicine uses racial and ethnic categories to assess disease risk, testing and treatment.
In India, upstart Aam Aadmi Party is shaking up traditional politics
KURUKSHETRA, India — Sakit Poswal, an engineering graduate and aspiring actor, never gave much thought to politics until last fall, when a new party burst into the spotlight promising total transparency and handing out white caps stamped with the...
Moving beyond the Charles Bukowski American lowlife cliche
When Charles Bukowski died in San Pedro 20 years ago, the obituaries in the next day's papers typically began with some iteration of Time magazine's stock description of the writer as the "laureate of American lowlife." In the decades since, the...
Acceptance rates at elite U.S. colleges decline
Throughout the arduous college application process, Brown University was on the top of Madeline Anderson's wish list. So when the Long Beach high school senior received a rejection from the Ivy League campus, she was disappointed but also knew she...
Scientists get schooled at Calaveras County frog-jumping contest
Scientists have long thought that bullfrogs generally can’t jump more than a meter. Turns out they were wrong -- which they learned only after leaving the lab and heading to California to witness a county fair contest inspired by one of Mark...
LUX Dark matter detector finds no WIMPs, so why are scientists happy?
Scientists at an ambitious dark matter experiment in operation at an underground gold mine in South Dakota have discovered exactly what they thought they would: nothing. And the results have got them really excited. After running the detector...
Katherine Hagedorn dies at 52; Pomona professor was Santeria priestess
Katherine Hagedorn was not your stereotypical priestess in the Cuba-based Santeria religion, known for its complex, ecstatic drumming that adherents believe can call forth deities. She grew up in New Jersey, was white, had a doctorate in...
William Sullivan dies at 90; diplomat had key roles in Vietnam, Iran conflicts
William H. Sullivan, a veteran diplomat who oversaw the "secret war" in Laos, aided in negotiations to end U.S. military involvement in Vietnam and was the last American ambassador to Iran, died Oct. 11, one day before his 91st birthday. ...
Janet Yellen more experienced than Fed predecessors
WASHINGTON -- Janet Yellen, President Obama’s choice to head the Federal Reserve, comes to the post with more years and a wider range of experience at the central bank than her predecessors and a career-long focus on the issue that remains at the...
Review: 'It's Better to Jump' is lopsided snapshot of the ancient walled city of Acre in Israel
The documentary "It's Better to Jump" is a provocative, if lopsided snapshot of the ancient walled city of Acre (or Akka), located on the northwest coast of Israel. Told mostly via testimony from its large Arab populace, who denounce the...
NYPD's Raymond Kelly walks out of Brown University talk after heckling
A planned speech by New York Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly at Brown University in Providence had to be canceled Tuesday after hecklers shouted down the top cop during his remarks. Kelly, commissioner since 2002, had intended to...
Football helmet design can alter concussion rate, study finds
Super Bowl viewers might want to keep an eye on the helmets crashing together in Sunday’s game between the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos. A new study says that the lids worn by opposing quarterbacks Peyton Manning and Russell Wilson, not to...
Galaxy's first pick in MLS SuperDraft is defender Kyle Venter
The Galaxy chose defender Kyle Venter of the University of New Mexico on Thursday as the team's first selection in this year's Major League Soccer SuperDraft. Venter, 22, was the 23rd pick overall in the second round of the 76-player SuperDraft...
Free speech still under siege in the Ivy League
On April 15, 1974, William Shockley, the Nobel laureate who believed that blacks were less intelligent than whites, was supposed to debate William Rusher, the publisher of the National Review, at Yale University on the topic: “Resolved: That...
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