Dirt roads may evoke the bucolic simplicity of another century, but financially strained townships point out that dirt roads cost twice as much as maintaining paved roads.

A number of linguists contend that all of the thousands of languages spoken by the world’s five billion people can be traced back to a common root language.

With only 5 percent of the world’s population, United States citizens consume 28 percent of its nonrenewable resources, drive more than one-third of its automobiles, and use 21 times more water per capita than Europeans do.

While depressed property values can hurt some large investors, they are potentially devastating for homeowners, whose equity – in many cases representing a life’s savings – can plunge or even disappear.

While some propose to combat widespread illegal copying of computer programs by attempting to change people’s attitudes toward pirating, others by suggesting reducing software prices to decrease the incentive for pirating, and still others by calling for the prosecution of those who copy software illegally.

A wildlife expert predicts that the reintroduction of the caribou into northern Minnesota would fail if the density of the timber wolf population in that region is more numerous than one wolf for every 39 square miles.

Concerned at the increase in accident fatalities, Tennessee adopted a child-passenger protection law requiring the parents of children under four years of age to be restrained in a child safety seat.

Found throughout Central and South America, sloths hang from trees by long rubbery limbs and sleep fifteen hours a day, moving infrequently enough that two species of algae grow on its coat and between its toes.

At Shiprock, New Mexico, a perennially powerful girls’ high school basketball team has become a path to college for some and a source of pride for a community where the household incomes of 49 percent of them are below the poverty level.

The prime lending rate is a key rate in the economy: not only are the interest rates on most loans to small and medium-sized businesses tied to the prime, but also on a growing number of consumer loans, including home equity loans.