Brain scans have proved that a small number of couples can respond with as much passion after 20 years as most people exhibit only in the first flush of love...researchers nicknamed the couples “swans” because they have similar mental “love maps” to animals that mate for life such as swans, voles and grey foxes.
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Monday, February 2, 2009
Astronomers Say Time Travel Happens All The Time
Time travel seems like stuff of science fiction, but in a sense, astronomers do it all the time.
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Green Inc.: Offsets in the Air in San Francisco
This spring, travelers entering San Francisco International Airport will see a new type of kiosk at check-in -- one offering carbon offsets for those who wish to counter the greenhouse-gas emissions from their trip.
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Canada's forests now add to, not subtract from, climate woes
The country's 1.2 million square miles of trees -- dubbed the "lungs of the planet" by ecologists because they account for more than 7 percent of Earth's total forest lands -- could always be depended upon to suck in vast quantities of carbon dioxide, cleansing the world of much of the harmful heat-trapping gas. Not anymore.
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Genes give Africans a better sense of taste
New research suggests that Africans have more sensitive palettes than Europeans and Asians – at least for bitter tastes. A survey of numerous African populations in Kenya and Cameroon found a striking amount of diversity in a gene responsible for sensing bitter tastes.
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The sum of human emotion
Especially mathematicians, who spend all their days doing boring sums in some remote world of the intellect.Some news, guys: it's not true.
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Glorious Hi-Res View of Orion and its Stars (PIC + overlay)
Most people can identify the belt, but what about all the other stars that make up this constellation of Orion the Hunter?
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Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Potatoes May Hold Key To Alzheimer's Treatment

A virus that commonly infects potatoes bears a striking resemblance to one of the key proteins implicated in Alzheimer's disease (AD), and researchers have used that to develop antibodies that may slow or prevent the onset of AD.
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Study Reveals Ocean 'Dead Zones' Expanding Worldwide

Oceanic "dead zones" where marine life cannot survive have been steadily increasing over the past five decades and now encompass 400 coastal areas of the world, a US-Swedish study said Friday.
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Portal to Mythical Mayan Underworld Found in Mexico

Mexican archeologists have discovered a maze of stone temples in underground caves, some submerged in water and containing human bones, which ancient Mayans believed was a portal where dead souls entered the underworld.
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Scientists: Star Trek's Warp Drive is Actually Possible

Two physicists have boldly gone where no reputable scientists should go and devised a new scheme to travel faster than the speed of light. The advance could mean that Star Trek fantasies of interstellar civilisations and voyages powered by warp drive are now no longer the exclusive domain of science fiction writers.
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Engineers build mini drug-producing biofactories in yeast

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a novel way to churn out large quantities of drugs, including antiplaque toothpaste additives, antibiotics, nicotine, and even morphine, using mini biofactories--in yeast.
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Brain 'will be battlefield of future'

The human brain could become a battlefield in future wars, a new report predicts, including 'pharmacological land mines' and drones directed by mind control
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Scientists Develop a Robot with a Biological Brain

It’s interesting to note that this project is being led by Professor Kevin Warwick, who became famous in 1998 when a silicon chip was implanted in his arm to allow a computer to monitor him in order to assess the latest technology for use with the disabled.
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Mankind is the 'Earth's Biggest Threat'

Global warming is causing significant changes to the Earth's natural systems and it is highly unlikely that any force but man-made climate change can be blamed .
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Guy Films Space Shuttle Launch from Passing Airliner

Watching a space shuttle launch from the ground is undoubtedly very awe inspiring, but this video of a launch takes the biscuit: It's filmed from thousands of feet in the air.
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Remains of Ancient Cemetery Found in Sahara

A tiny woman and two children were laid to rest on a bed of flowers 5,000 years ago in what is now the barren Sahara Desert. The slender arms of the youngsters were still extended to the woman in perpetual embrace when researchers discovered their skeletons in a remarkable cemetery that is providing clues to two civilizations who lived there.
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Spaceship Could Fly Faster Than Light

The idea involves manipulating dark energy – the mysterious force behind the universe's ongoing expansion – to propel a spaceship forward without breaking the laws of physics. "Think of it like a surfer riding a wave," said Gerald Cleaver, a physicist at Baylor University. "The ship would be pushed by the spatial bubble and the bubble would
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Nukeidolia

Well, this one is original, I’ll give it that…I got an interesting email from French BABloggee Pierre Joliveau. His father worked on some nuclear tests in French Polynesia back in the 1950s, and took some amazing photographs of the explosions.
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Report: spies need to stay on top of neuorscience research

The National Research Council is publishing a report, Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies, on the need for the intelligence community to develop better institutional awareness of neuroscience research as a matter of national security.
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Scientists Find Ways to Cloak 3D Materials

New invisibility cloak works toward fulfilling long-time dreams of military, ninjas, fantasy fans alike.A new breakthrough in the art of illusion has been achieved. Researchers at the UC Berkeley have for the first time found a way to cloak 3D materials.They did this with not only one, but with two different materials.
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Birth Control Pill Make Women Pick Bad Mates

Birth-control pills could screw up a woman's ability to sniff out a compatible mate, a new study finds. While several factors can send a woman swooning, including big brains and brawn, body odor can be critical in the final decision, the researchers say.
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Study: The Ocean is Totally Screwed

A major part of Jackson’s study, is the view that humans are laying the groundwork for mass extinctions within our oceans not seen since the ecological upheavals of our murky past, according to a new study published in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
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Spooky Physics: Signals Seem to Travel Faster Than Light

Strange events that Einstein himself called "spooky" might happen at least 10,000 times the speed of light, according to the latest attempt to understand them. Atoms, electrons, and the rest of the infinitesimally tiny building blocks of the universe can behave rather bizarrely, going completely against the way life as we normally experience it.
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Nanoantenna Arrays Seen As Possible Solar Cell Replacement

Traditional solar cells only use up to 20% of the visible light they collect, and more efficient solar cells are too expensive for mass production. Now researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Idaho Laboratory have figured out a way to capture solar energy on the cheap: plastic sheets filled with billions of nanoantennas.
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DNA Glitch Prevents Kids From Learning From Their Mistakes

In about 30% of children, the coils of their DNA carry a glitch, one that leaves their brains with few dopamine receptors, molecules that act as docking ports for one of the neurochemicals that carry our thoughts and emotions. Children with the genetic variant are unable to learn from mistakes.
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The Top 7 Biofuels to Drive Us Beyond Gasoline

Forget food crops. Future fuels will come from more practical feedstocks. Plus, each generation will use fewer resources and pack more energy than the last. PM crunches the numbers on alternative fuels for the real world.
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Molecules multiplied

The ability to amplify minuscule quantities of DNA into workable samples, using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), has transformed biology. Now Chad Mirkin and Hyo Jae Hoon at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, think they have a working example that proves that the feat is possible for compounds other than nucleic acids.
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Berkeley Scientists: World In 'Mass Extinction Spasm'

Devastating declines of amphibian species around the world are a sign of a biodiversity disaster larger than just frogs and salamanders. Researchers said substantial die-offs of amphibians and other plant and animal species add up to a new mass extinction facing the planet.
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Mental Images Are Like Pictures - Slide Show

Joel Pearson and his team from Vanderbilt University have found strong evidence suggesting that our brains experience mental images as if they were pictures.
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Fear Factors: Understand Your Phobias

...if your anxiety is so intense that it causes you to alter the way you live, you might be classified as a having a phobia, an anxiety disorder characterized by intense, irrational fear of an object, situation or person. If so, you have company...the behavioral part of cognitive-behavioral therapy involves gradually exposing yourself
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Magnificent Waterfall “Discovered” in Peru

Magnificent Waterfall “Discovered” in Peru– Perhaps One of World’s Tallest. The big environmental news coming out of Peru this past week was that a huge waterfall previously unknown to the greater world was “discovered” in the country’s Amazon Rainforest region.
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Invisibility cloak 'step closer'

Scientists in the US say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people invisible...
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APOD: Black Hole Candidate Cygnus X-1

Is that a black hole? Quite possibly. The Cygnus X-1 binary star system contains one of the best candidates for a black hole. The system was discovered because it is one of the brightest X-ray sources on the sky, shining so bright it was detected by the earliest rockets carrying cameras capable of seeing the previously unknown X-ray sky.
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Scientists stop the ageing process

Scientists have stopped the ageing process in an entire organ for the first time, a study released today says.
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Extraordinary satellite images: Britain as seen from space

This is Britain - but not as we know it. These extraordinary satellite images reveal what our nation looks like from the skies.From flight paths and road networks to telephone exchanges across London, the stunning aerial shots paint a striking new perspective on the British Isles.
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