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Over the last seven years, Jessie Little Doe Fermino, a member of the Mashpee tribe on Cape Cod, has been on a single-minded mission to revive the language of her ancestors, Wampanoag, the one that greeted the Pilgrims when they landed at Plymouth Rock and that gave the state of Massachusetts its name. But when she applied to the National Endowment of the Humanities for a grant to create a Wampanoag dictionary, she was turned down. The apparent reasons: the Wampanoag language has not been used in about 100 years, the known descendants of the original speakers number only 2,500 and Ms. Fermino is trying to make a spoken language out of a language that until recently existed only in documents, many of them from the 17th century.

An explanation of the current nutrition facts label required by the FDA. Contains facts and statistics about the American diet and use of the labeling system.

An article that explains a debate that has raged for years in academic circles. When you read online, are you reading or skimming? Is the Internet killing reading or just helping students develop different skills?

Freakonomics is well-worth checking out. Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, authors of Freakonomics, keep the conversation going from their best-selling book that explores the hidden side of everything.

This NYT article is about how the way we refer to and treat the elderly (calling them "dear" or speaking loudly to them, for example) can affect their health. Such studies have broader ranging implications. When we call others derogatory names, can it affect their health? Does using "baby talk" affect the language development of children? Do our assumptions about teenagers affect their intellectual development?

An article, based mostly on anecdotal data, that discusses college students' lack of "religious literacy."