Roughly one-half of the world's population, including virtually all of East and Southeast Asia also, is wholly dependent on rice to be its staple food.

According to entomologists, single locusts are quiet creatures, but when locusts are placed with others of their species, they become excited, change color, vibrate, and even hum.

In the 1820's, anthracite coalfields opened in eastern Pennsylvania, and when canals and eventually railroads reached into the region, there were substantial supplies of coal that was exported to the nation's growing mills, forges, factories, and railways.

Over the next few years, increasing demands on the Chattahoochee River, which flows into the Apalachicola River, could alter the saline content of Apalachicola Bay, which would rob the oysters there of their flavor, and to make them decrease in size, less distinctive, and less in demand.

In an attempt to attract more tourists, the Swiss government commissioned several life-size fiberglass cow statues, having them decorated by local artists, and set them up on the streets of Zurich.

Although women's wages are improving, Department of Labor statistics show that the ratio of their earnings with that of men have been roughly static since 1960.

Scientists claim that the discovery of the first authenticated mammal bones in amber could provide important clues of determining, in addition to how, when mammals colonized the islands of the West Indies.

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft will orbit the asteroid Eros for a year, slowly moving closer to the surface of the object to make ever more precise measurements that scientists hope will enable them to understand how the solar system formed some four billion years ago.

The quality of early pieces of blown glass excavated in Italy and Western Europe by far surpass those of pieces from the eastern Mediterranean, when regarded not only in terms of the variety of shapes represented, but also in terms of decorative techniques and functionality.

Finally reaching a decision on an issue that has long been politically charged in the Pacific Northwest, politicians decided to postpone by at least five years an ambitious plan to protect wild salmon and other endangered fish, instead of which they proposed a series of smaller steps, by which they intend to protect the fish.