>Do you know why the frame on the left side of my page keeps refreshing itself? This seems to happen every time I choose an article to read and takes a significant portion of my bandwith (maybe every 15 seconds or so). Is there a way to configure or disable this feature?

Click on the personal information icon to configure to refresh rate. The range is between 60 and 600. Or, a value of 0 disable the refresh.

But, we don't refresh for nothing. If we do that, that's because there is a need for it. You have 3 dynamic icons in the toolbar.