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Publication of a landmark government study probing whether diesel engine exhaust causes lung cancer in miners — already 20 years in the making — has been delayed by industry and congressional insistence on seeing study data and documents before the public does.

Here is a guest post from Alan Walker, president of Upper Iowa University. The private, nonprofit university is unusual in its “global” format: Most of its 6,000-plus students attend through distance education programs in the United States and abroad.

A year after the U.S. Naval Academy expelled seven midshipmen for using synthetic marijuana on the zero-tolerance Annapolis campus, the “spice” investigation is over, and college officials say the drug problem is past.

Watching this year’s batch of Super Bowl ads, it’s hard not to be struck by the fundamental difference between the “old” and “new” ways of marketing to consumers.

If you think about it, the Super Bowl experience is unique in that tens of millions of people around the nation watched exactly the same ads, in exactly the same sequence, at exactly the same time, as part of a collectively shared experience. How often does that happen in our little Filter Bubble on the Internet?

Super Bowl ads are a longtime tradition, but this one from Best Buy caught our eye, discovered . The ad features innovators who have been changing the mobile technology landscape — a major tool in conquering “Big Data.”

In a stunning repeat of 2008’s come-from-behind win in the Super Bowl, New York Giants Quarterback Eli Manning again led a scoring drive with just minutes left in the game to vault his team into the lead. This time, the New England Patriots may not have come into the game undefeated, though they were still the favored team to win. But as Giants safety Kenny Phillips told The New York Times, he and his teammates weren’t concerned. “When Eli got the ball back at the end of the game, we all just knew.”

Plenty of school reformers say that if 5 to 10 percent of teachers in the United States are fired each year, then U.S. standardized test scores would compete with the top-achieving nations. It’s not true, but that doesn’t stop them from saying it. Well, now we learn that teachers are no longer the only professionals who are being targeted for wholesale firing.

This was written by Joanne Yatvin, a longtime public school educator, author and past president of the National Council of Teachers of English. She teaches part-time at Portland State University and is writing a book on good teaching in high poverty schools.

The Great Recession carried special pain for black women like Jane Ladson.

She had always been the one her family turned to when they needed help, and she didn’t hesitate to give it. She helped pay for weddings and rent. She made room for her nephew when her brother died of AIDS. And even now in her 50s, she took in a baby that wasn’t her own.

Carrizo Oil and Gas had every reason to believe this rustic town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains was an ideal place to build Virginia’s first well to explore for natural gas in the state’s Marcellus Shale.

Even NFL teams use a standardized test to assess whether athletes are smart enough to draft.

And given that today is the Super Bowl pitting the New York Giants against the New England Patriots, did Pats quarterback Tom Brady or Giants quarterback Eli Manning score higher?

The nation’s leading breast cancer advocacy group has gone into full damage-control mode.

Executives of the embattled Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation held conference calls with affiliates Saturday to discuss a new strategy for working with supporters, a first step in rebuilding trust after last week’s public relations fiasco surrounding Komen’s off-then-on-again decision to fund Planned Parenthood.

When Hurricane Frances swept through the Caribbean in 2004, it wiped out populations of little anole lizards living on seven tiny islands in the Bahamas.

Instead of mourning the loss, Harvard University biologist Jonathan Losos spied an opportunity: He could, for the first time, test a controversial 70-year-old idea in evolutionary biology.

This was written by Marion Brady, veteran teacher, administrator, curriculum designer and author. This first appeared on truth-out.org .

By Marion Brady

Imagine the present corporately promoted education reform effort as a truck, its tires nearly flat from the weight of the many unexamined assumptions it carries.

Two key federal agencies have recommended that the Interior Department reject a controversial coal lease proposed for an area near Bryce Canyon National Park, arguing it could impair visibility at the park and harm imperiled animals living in the region.

An unexpectedly rosy jobs report set off a chain reaction Friday, upending economists’ gloomy predictions for the coming year, leading to a surge on Wall Street and potentially boggling the political calculus of the 2012 presidential campaigns.

Update: D.C. schools strengthening hiring process, more details D.C. school officials have now fired a principal they had recently hired without knowing that she had been accused of “unethical” behavior when she was a principal in Dallas, a district spokeswoman said Friday.

Corning, the makers of Gorilla Glass, have entered into the movie-making business...sort of.

In their latest attempt at viral-video advertising, Corning released a nearly six-minute follow-up to their highly successful “A Day Made of Glass” Web video on Feb. 3. ”A Day Made of Glass 2” features a world where car dashboards, tablets, blackboards and tables are replaced with interactive display glass. Imagine a more interactive, streamlined iPad transposed on nearly every surface you interact with.

In recent days, we have heard President Obama lecture college presidents about cost control, and we have seen a vaunted Stanford professor quit to pursue teaching students by the millions online — at minimal cost.