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Shark-Bitten Crocodile Poop Fossils Found No Really (20 March 12:52) |
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Paleontologists have stumbled across a scientific first that’s sure to inspire both fascination and disgust: coprolites, or fossilized fecal matter, bearing the distinct impressions of a ... |
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Large Hadron Collider Triples Its Own Record (20 March 12:24) |
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The Large Hadron Collider set a new record for the creation of energetic particle beams this morning. The particle accelerator, which surpassed Fermilab’s Tevatron in December as the ... |
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Evolution of Fairness Driven by Culture Not Genes (19 March 02:35) |
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Human behaviors are often explained as hard-wired evolutionary leftovers of life on the savannah or during the Stone Age. But a study of one very modern behavior, fairness toward total stra... |
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Op-Ed Why the Internet Should Win the Nobel Peace Prize (18 March 11:15) |
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This year, a Chinese dissident and a Russian human rights advocate — recent nominees for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize — are joined by an unlikely, nonhuman contender: the internet... |
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Cosmic Dust Gives Millky Way a Fiery Mane (18 March 11:00) |
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The Planck space telescope, which is surveying the entire sky in four massive sweeps, has nearly finished its first scan.
Rotating in orbit, Planck takes data of the sky in strips, almost ... |
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Cosmic Dust Gives Milky Way a Fiery Mane (18 March 11:00) |
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The Planck space telescope, which is surveying the entire sky in four massive sweeps, has nearly finished its first scan.
Rotating in orbit, Planck takes data of the sky in strips, almost ... |
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Controversy Erupts Over Captive Endangered Bat Colony (18 March 09:11) |
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A bitter controversy is brewing over a captive colony of endangered Virginia big-eared bats, founded inNovember as a hedge against disease driving the species to extinction in the wild.
Of ... |
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The Oldest Trees on the Planet (18 March 05:15) |
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Trees are some of the longest-lived organisms on the planet. At least 50 trees have been around for m... |
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Cool New Exoplanet Is Near Habitable Zone (18 March 02:04) |
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Extrasolar planet hunters are excited about a not-so-hot discovery. For the first time, they’ve found a relatively cool extrasolar planet that they can study in detail.
The finding is a ... |
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Seminal 70s Environmental TV Series Now Online (18 March 01:42) |
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Every episode of what was probably the environmental movement’s first television series is now available on the Web.
Our Vanishing Wilderness first aired almost 40 years ago. The eigh... |
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Quantum Physics Used to Control Mechanical System (17 March 10:41) |
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By using a quantum device to control a mechanical object, researchers have linked the mind-bending laws of quantum physics to the tangible, everyday world.
Until now, quantum physical behav... |
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Red in Jupiters Spot Not What Astronomers Thought (17 March 03:56) |
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The best thermal images of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot yet captured have revealed surprising weather and temperature variation within the solar system’s most famous storm.
The dark... |
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Methane May Be Building Under Antarctic Ice (17 March 01:09) |
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BALTIMORE — Microbes living under ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland could be churning out large quantities of the greenhouse gas methane, a new study suggests.
In recent years scient... |
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Climate Quick Fix Could Create Toxic Algae Blooms (17 March 12:11) |
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Pouring iron into oceans may combat global warming by feeding carbon dioxide-gobbling algae, but those algal blooms could become fountains of neurotoxin.
According to a small-scale test, ir... |
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Closest Ever Look at Martian Moon (16 March 04:36) |
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The sharpest images yet taken by the Mars Express spacecraft of Mars’ tiny moon Phobos reveal features as small as 4.4 meters across, the European Space Agency announced March 15.
Some of... |
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Youre Leaving a Bacterial Fingerprint on Your Keyboard (16 March 02:51) |
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The bacterial communities that live on human skin may form a bacterial fingerprint on the items that you touch.
In a new study led by microbiologists Rob Knight and Noah Fierer of the Univ... |
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Gene That Lets Snakes See Heat Helps You Taste Wasabi (15 March 10:49) |
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Genes that make mustard hot and spicy on human tongues also let snakes “see” heat, explaining the remarkable ability of some species to strike prey in total darkness.
Until now... |
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Research Reveals Early Signs of Autism in Some Kids (13 March 04:11) |
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BALTIMORE — Some infants headed for a diagnosis of autism, or autism spectrum disorder as it’s officially known, can be reliably identified at 14 months old based on the presence of fiv... |
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Big Earthquakes Cause Premature Births (13 March 03:39) |
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A new study of a 2005 earthquake in Chile supports the surprising hypothesis that pregnant women who experience earthquakes during the first trimester of their pregnancies have increased ri... |
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Video Cold Little Comet Is No Match for the Big Hot Sun (13 March 12:34) |
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A small, newly discovered comet will not get a chance to enjoy its fame for long.
As you can see in this image sequence obtained by NASA’s Solar and Heliosopheric Observatory, the com... |
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Video Cold Little Comet Is No Match for Big Hot Sun (13 March 12:34) |
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A small, newly discovered comet will not get a chance to enjoy its fame for long.
As you can see in this image sequence obtained by NASA’s Solar and Heliosopheric Observatory, the com... |
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Solar Slumber May Have Been Caused by Magnetic Flows (12 March 11:54) |
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Newly reported observations of gas flows on the solar surface may explain why the sun recently had such an extended case of the doldrums.
From 2008 through the first half of 2009, the sun h... |
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Desperate Efforts to Save Endangered Bats May Fail (12 March 04:30) |
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A desperate attempt to keep endangered Virginia big-eared bats alive in captivity has shown just how difficult that noble task may be.
The effort was prompted by the discovery of White Nose... |
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The 70s Photos That Made Us Want to Save Earth (12 March 06:30) |
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Two years after Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, the new institution s... |
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You Are a Tamagotchi Turning Your Health Into a Game (12 March 03:42) |
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In the mid 1990s, a craze swept Japan and crested its way onto American shores: Kids were going crazy for the Tamagotchi, an egg-shaped digital pet. Every few hours, users would press a cou... |
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Quantum Computing Thrives on Chaos (12 March 01:50) |
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Embracing chaos just might help physicists build a quantum brain. A new study shows that disorder can enhance the coupling between light and matter in quantum systems, a find that could eve... |
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Your Chilean Sea Bass Dinner Deprives Killer Whales (12 March 12:21) |
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A one-of-a-kind killer whale population appears to be threatened by human appetites for Antarctic toothfish, better known to restaurant-goers as Chilean Sea Bass.
As fishing fleets patrol t... |
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Arctic Reindeer Go Off the Circadian Clock (11 March 11:17) |
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Reindeer adapt to the Arctic’s endless summer light and winter dark by silencing their circadian clock. The adaptation may be a general one that helps Arctic animals make the most of ... |
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Ear Infections Could Cause Long-Term Lazy Ear (11 March 08:02) |
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Some folks who don’t seem to listen may just have a lazy ear. A new study in rats shows that short-term hearing impairments at any stage of life can lead to rewiring in the part of the br... |
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Brain Scans Depict Gulf War Syndrome Damage (11 March 12:47) |
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SALT LAKE CITY Nearly two decades after vets began returning from the Middle East complaining of Gulf War Syndrome, the federal government has yet to formally accept that their vague jumble... |
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Half-Cocked Hermaphrochickens Challenge Gender Identity (11 March 12:24) |
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Chicken sex doesn’t work like ours. No, not that sex — but the process by which an embryo becomes a recognizably male or female animal.
Unlike mammals, it’s not hormones that... |
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Half-Cocked Hermaphrochickens Challenge Gender Determination (11 March 12:24) |
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Chicken sex doesn’t work like ours. No, not that sex — but the process by which an embryo becomes a recognizably male or female animal.
Unlike mammals, it’s not hormones ... |
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Bottled Wind Could Be as Constant as Coal (10 March 06:30) |
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Wind power has made incredible inroads into the U.S. energy system thanks to big, efficient machines standing hundreds of feet tall. But the future of wind power may be underground.
In the ... |
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Better Than Apollo The Space Program We Almost Had (10 March 05:05) |
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SAN FRANCISCO — In the late 1950s, American space companies jumped into a headlong race to build an aerospace industry that could launch missiles across the world and rockets above it.
In... |
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Your Computer Really Is a Part of You (10 March 03:07) |
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An empirical test of ideas proposed by Martin Heidegger shows the great German philosopher to be correct: Everyday tools really do become part of ourselves.
The findings come from a decepti... |
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Mile-High Mega Kites Could Pull Giant Floating Power Plants (10 March 12:06) |
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Take a huge oceanic catamaran, stick a hydroelectric turbine underneath it, and hitch it to a 6.5 million-square-foot parafoil flying nearly a mile in the air. That’s a Korean researc... |
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Low Tolerance for Pain May Be Genetic (09 March 03:34) |
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One form of a common genetic variant may ratchet up pain sensitivity in people who have it, researchers report online March 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The dis... |
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All of Lifes Ingredients Found in Orion Nebula (09 March 02:46) |
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The ingredients for life as we know it have been found in the Orion Nebula.
By finely separating the spectrum of incoming light, astronomers are able to detect the chemical fingerprints of ... |
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Kindness Breeds More Kindness Study Shows (09 March 01:30) |
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In findings sure to gladden the heart of anyone who’s ever wondered whether tiny acts of kindness have larger consequences, researchers have shown that generosity is contagious.
Goodn... |
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Chile Earthquake Moved Entire City 10 Feet to the West (08 March 11:54) |
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The magnitude 8.8 quake that struck near Maule, Chile Feb. 27 moved the entire city of Concepcion 10 feet to the west.
Precise GPS measurements from before and after the earthquake, the 5th... |
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How Big Waves Go Rogue (06 March 05:15) |
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An extra-tall wave struck a cruise ship off the Mediterranean coast of Spain this week, claiming two lives and injuring one person on board. Though the wave may not qualify as a “rogu... |
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Animation of Giant Iceberg Collision as Seen From Space (06 March 03:57) |
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The collision in early February of the 60-mile-long B-9B iceberg with the protruding tongue of the Mertz Glacier in East Antarctica is captured here in a series of satellite radar images.
T... |
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Earths Magnetic Field Is 35 Billion Years Old (06 March 12:59) |
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Evidence for the existence of Earth’s magnetic field has been pushed back about 250 million years, new research suggests. The field may therefore be old enough to have shielded some of th... |
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First Microbes Colonized Land by Using Fat For Protection (05 March 04:00) |
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The earliest microbes that survived on land may have synthesized fat molecules to prevent their death from dehydration.
The molecules, called wax esters, could have helped the microbesÂ... |
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Fears of Undersea Methane Leaks Already Coming True (05 March 03:21) |
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Prodigious plumes of planet-warming methane are bubbling from sediments across a broad region of Arctic seafloor previously thought to be sealed by permafrost, new analyses indicate. The re... |
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Senator Proposes Shuttle-Extension Hail Mary (05 March 12:40) |
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The turmoil and political maneuvering over the future of NASA continues in the wake of the Obama administration’s cancellation of the Constellation program.
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchin... |
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Gut Bacteria Cause Overeating in Mice (05 March 12:34) |
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The connection between gut bacteria and obesity has gained some weight, with new findings demonstrating a mouse link between immune system malfunction, bacterial imbalance and increased ap... |
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Pharma Watchdog Needs Your Help With Incriminating Documents (04 March 11:24) |
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Overwhelmed by thousands of documents describing the inner workings of pharmaceutical companies, the Drug Industry Document Archive wants to enlist the help of crowds.
The documents are unc... |
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Research Calls Forensic DNA Technique Into Question (04 March 04:01) |
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A DNA-matching technique often used in forensics has been called to the stand.
Fine-grained analysis of DNA found in cell structures called mitochondria suggests that it can vary widely bet... |
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How Black Holes Overcome Centrifugal Force to Suck in Gas (04 March 03:34) |
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Astronomers have finally gotten a firmer grip on how supermassive black holes in the centers of most galaxies gobble up gas from their surroundings. In a new study, two astronomers neatly e... |
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