Decline in smoking means decline in state revenue, by Ali Eaves, Special to Stateline "Americans are smoking less and less. That’s good news for public health, but it creates an ironically nasty side effect for many state budgets. They have grown dependent on an annual stream of money from tobacco companies, and that money is itself dependent on the number of people who consume cigarettes. The payments to states come each year as dictated by the Master Settlement Agreement, a 1998 settlement between 46 states and most of the big tobacco companies, in exchange for states’ promises not to sue the cigarette manufacturers over health claims. States have received $73 billion to date from participating tobacco companies. The payments are calculated each year by a formula that partly relies on the smoking rates in each state. Predicting the payments is never an exact science, but this year’s unwelcome 16 percent drop in funds is thought by many experts as the beginning of a long-term downward trend."

China overtakes the United States to become world’s largest energy consumer
IEA [International Energy Agency] calculations based on preliminary data show that China has now overtaken the United States to become the world's largest energy user. China's rise to the top ranking was faster than expected as it was much less affected by the global financial crisis than the United States.. Since 2000, China’s energy demand has doubled, yet on a per capita basis it is still only around one-third of the OECD average. Prospects for further growth are very strong considering the country’s low per-capita consumption level and the fact that China is the most populous nation on the planet, with more than 1.3 billion people. China’s demand today would be even higher still if the government had not made such progress in reducing the energy intensity (the energy input per dollar of output) of its economy. It has also very quickly become one of the world’s leaders in renewable energy, particularly wind power and solar energy, and paved the way for a big expansion of nuclear power.

From muse reader: Minimal pairs are letters that are similar sounding in spoken English. Like D and T, Z and S, DG and CH, V and F, G and K, B and P—it’s less specified w vowels. But sounds that are specified in English, not necessarily in other languages. (L and R fare biggies for Chinese speakers).

"Did you receive my invite?" If the noun use of the word "invite" grates on you, you are not alone. Perhaps you could simply respond with, "Yes, didn't you get my accept?" Or you could go to such great lengths as to create a website about it: IsInviteaNoun.com. The truth is that the nouning of verbs (and verbing of nouns) is nothing new. The OED shows the word "invite" used as a noun going as far back as 1659 (the verb sense is from 1553). There are numerous words in the English language that do double duty as nouns and verbs (permit, look, commute, transport, address, to name a few). These noun senses usually follow a short while after the verb sense. Most such nouns become an everyday part of the language, while some continue to carry a stigma, as does the noun invite. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

The largest single hoard of Roman coins ever found in Britain has been unearthed on a farm near Frome in Somerset. A total of 52,500 bronze and silver coins dating from the 3rd century AD – including the largest ever found set of coins minted by the self proclaimed emperor Carausius, who lasted seven years before he was murdered by his finance minister – were found by Dave Crisp, a hobby metal detectorist from Devizes, Wiltshire. Crisp first dug up a fingernail-sized bronze coin only 30cm below the surface. Even though he had never found a hoard before, when he had turned up a dozen coins he stopped digging and called in the experts, who uncovered a pot bellied pottery jar stuffed with the extraordinary collection, all dating from 253 to 293 AD – the year of Carausius's death. How they got into the field remains a mystery, but archaeologists believe they must represent the life savings of an entire community – possibly a votive offering to the gods. Roman road runs nearby, but no trace of a villa, settlement or cemetery has been found. Read the story and see a picture of some of the coins at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jul/08/hoard-roman-coins-somerset

The word “literati” was coined back in 1621 as a label for scholarly or literary people (it comes from the same Latin source word that gives us “literature” and “literate.”) Then in 1956 Time Magazine turned “literati” into “glitterati” as a collective label for writers, artists and performers who are celebrities. People who have the glitter of glamour about them are the “glitterati”... the nerds who are well-versed in computers and technology are the “digerati” http://www.abc.net.au/newsradio/txt/s1982646.htm

A team of astronomers says a huge ball of burning gas drifting in a neighboring galaxy may be the heaviest star ever discovered, burning itself off at 10 million times the luminosity of the sun, the Royal Astronomical Society reports. Astrophysicist Paul Crowther says the star, called R136a1, is twice as heavy as any previously discovered and may once have weighed as much as 320 solar masses. The team found several stars with surface temperatures over 40,000 degrees, more than seven times hotter than the sun, according to the Royal Astronomical Society.
Crowther, an astrophysicist at the University of Sheffield in northern England, says the huge star was identified at the center of a star cluster in the Tarantula Nebula, a sprawling cloud of gas and dust in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy about 165,000 light-years away from our own Milky Way. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/07/huge-star-that-dwarfs-the-sun-may--be-the-heaviest-ever/1?csp=34news

August 15 is Ferragosto in Italy, "the most important date in the summer calendar" and "a national holiday that traditionally involves a large meal with family and friends, such as a picnic in the country side or at the beach." The menus, often cold buffets, are "carefully composed to present a tempting array of light, often cold, dishes, in which fresh, local and seasonal ingredients are artfully combined to create a meal that is both flavorful and colorful."
Find more of the story, including recipes at: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10175/1067691-34.stm