Two years in the making, the 2008 US presidential election is on our doorstep. By the time the campaign ends, the candidates will have spent more than a billion dollars trying to get the job. All those bucks for a position that earns less than half million dollars a year and lasts only four years!

But weighing the post by its salary is like saying that Olympic athletes sweat for years just to pocket a few hundred dollars' worth of gold. The post of President of the United States carries immense power to make decisions that affect, for better or worse, people the world over.  And the vice-president - who must be ready to take the reigns at a moment's notice - is almost as powerful.That's why John McCain has chosen a woman the calibre of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

See her awesome Flow Chart.

In 1997 due to overwhelming public pressure, the UK Government banned the testing of cosmetics on animals, writes Julia Stephenson.

This was a great victory at the time, but did you know that each time a new household product (as if we don’t have enough already!) comes out it must still be tested on animals?

Ruby Wax has lived with depression since the age of ten. Now she's made a radical career shift from comedienne to psychotherapist

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‘There is a difference between “looking at" something as a photographer and truly "seeing" it.

In a culture saturated with visual messages, our eyes, and by extension our minds and hearts, have become numb and anesthetized to the desire to seek out the deeper meanings of the things we are exposed to.’ says Dennis Dunleavy, communications professor and Black Star Rising columnist. Vida Adamoli investgates, 

 To most of us the idea of a blind photographer is bewildering. After all, how can someone take a picture if they can’t see? And yet all over the world the blind and visually impaired are taking up photography, both as a creative medium and to communicate with their sighted fellows.

'This is the first example of a new class of pulsars,' says Stanford University's Peter Michelson, principal investigator for Fermi's Large Area Telescope. '[We think] it will give us fundamental insights into how these collapsed stars work.'

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It’s a common misconception that as we get older, our brain cells gradually diminish.  In fact, scientists now say that the opposite is true.

The more we use our brain, it literally grows more cells, becoming larger, sharper and more active.  It is possible to boost and improve our mental functions at any age, and also to develop new skills.