Science & TechnologyS


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More bad news for downgraded Pluto

Astronomers have announced yet more bad news for the much-lamented former planet Pluto. Kicked out of the club of planets last year into a new category of dwarf planet, it is not even the biggest of those, scientists have found.

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NASA battles failure of space station computer

HOUSTON - NASA said on Thursday that a new power feed could be the source of potentially catastrophic computer glitches aboard the $100 billion International Space Station but it hoped the problem would be resolved.

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Jumping to Conclusions? Human Sacrifice in Prehistoric Europe?



©AP Photo/Current Anthropology, Bohuslav Klima
A triple burial site in Dolni Vestonice, in the Moravian region of Czech Republic, thought to be approximately 27,000 years old.

NEW YORK - Investigations of prehistoric burial sites in Europe indicate that the region's population may have practiced ritual human sacrifice, according to a new study.

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One in five on the planet now has high-speed internet

Almost 300 million people worldwide are now accessing the internet using fast broadband connections, fuelling the growth of social networking services such as MySpace and generating thousands of hours of video through websites such as YouTube.

There are more than 1.1 billion of the world's estimated 6.6 billion people online and almost a third of them are now accessing the internet on high-speed lines. According to the internet consultancy Point Topic, 298 million people had broadband at the end of March and that is already estimated to have shot over 300 million. The statistics, however, paint a picture of a divided digital world.

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Nintendo Wii Gets Another Adventure - Secret Files: Tunguska

Koch Media has announced that it will port recently released PC adventure game Secret Files: Tunguska to both the Nintendo DS and Wii. 10TACLE Studios will handle development of the DS version, while Keen Games will handle development of the Wii version.

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Archaeologists in Bulgaria Find Labyrinth Resembling One in Crete

The archaeological expedition Strandzha discovered a labyrinth, similar to the famous labyrinth on the island of Crete.

The discovery was made near the village of Golyam Derven, close to the Bulgarian-Turkish border.

Archaeologists also found a skeleton of a ruler in the labyrinth, BGNES news agency reported.

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Microsoft seeks answer to question 'Would global warming make for a good game?'

Though some would have you believe that games are nothing but a breeding ground for murderers, one of the current console contenders is hoping that some of the industry's up-and-comers can convince us that games can change the world. In association with Games for Change - a movement that strives to use games as a means for social change - Microsoft is hosting a competition called the "Xbox 360 Games for Change Challenge" that will seek out new talent for the purposes of creating a game based on the current socio-political climate of the world today.

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The wet planet: There was life on Mars (probably)

Scientists now say that an ocean several miles deep once covered a third of the surface of the planet, enough water to support the origin and evolution of life. The red planet, they said, had once been a deep blue, just like Earth.

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Mystery Solved: Mars Had Large Oceans

Since 1991, planetary scientists have floated the idea that Mars once harbored vast oceans that covered roughly one-third of the planet. Two long shore-like lips of rock in the planet's northern hemisphere were thought to be the best evidence, but experts argued that they were too "hilly" to describe the smooth edges of ancient oceans.

The view just changed dramatically with a surprisingly simple breakthrough.

©Taylor Perron/UC Berkeley
A view of Mars as it might have appeared more than 2 billion years ago, with an ocean filling the lowland basin that now occupies the north polar region.

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Public donates to UW scientist to fund backward-in-time research

It can take a village to save science -- a village that so far includes a Las Vegas music mogul, Kirkland rocket scientist, Port Townsend artist, Bothell chemist, Louisiana gas-and-oil man with a place in Port Angeles and a Savannah, Ga., computer programmer.