It looks like California’s drought-ravaged crops aren’t alone in needing more water. According to the results of a new study from researchers at Harvard, more than half of the nation’s children and teens are dehydrated. And, shockingly, about 25 percent of kids don’t drink water daily.

That’s the key finding of the national study, which was published in the American Journal of Public Health late last week. The researchers initially set out to study the effect on adolescents of sugar-laden beverages such as soda and fruit juice. As they analyzed data on more than 4,100 participants ages 6 to 19 in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2009 to 2012, they discovered that most kids are mildly dehydrated.

The researchers found that boys and black adolescents are the most likely to not drink water. Boys were 76 percent more likely than girls to be dehydrated, and black children were 34 percent more likely than their white, Hispanic, and Asian American peers to be inadequately hydrated.

So, Why Should You Care? “These findings are significant because they highlight a potential health issue […]

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Credit: Universal Pictures

Hollywood tends to favor lively narrative intrigue over accurate scientific particulars, and the Jurassic Park franchise is no exception. The latest installment, Jurassic World, revisits the series’ core plot points: Dinosaurs, brought back into existence through science, wreak havoc in a jungle setting, leaving dead bodies and lessons about hubris in their wake. As with the original, released in 1993, many have taken issue with the science of the movie. The film’s dinosaurs are moored in 1980s paleontology: None of the on-screen species have feathers (scientists now think most dinosaurs sported plumage). The mosasaur and velociraptors are bigger than is historically accurate (some mosasaurs may have reached lengths of up to 50 feet in real life, but the one in the film is the size of a jumbo jet). And the mosasaur is depicted with frills running down its back — a laughably outdated idea in the paleontology world.

But there is one arena in which the film comes remarkably close to reality. […]

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Credit: www.thetegmentum.com

New research has cast serious doubts on the argument that legalization of medical marijuana would lead to more widespread use among teenagers. Researchers find no measurable impact from legalization of marijuana in 21 states.

The study, which was published Tuesday by Columbia University researchers in the The Lancet Psychiatry, examined marijuana use among more than a million teenagers over 24 years.

The researchers found no discernible impact in the 21 states that had legalized the drug for medical use. “The risk of marijuana use in states before passing medical marijuana laws did not differ significantly from the risk after medical marijuana laws were passed,” the co-authors wrote.

While researchers observed no discernible change after the laws were passed, they did find drug use rates were generally higher in states that had legalized marijuana. “State-level risk factors other than medical marijuana laws could contribute to both marijuana use and the passage of medical marijuana laws, and such factors warrant investigation,” the authors concluded.

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