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Would You Adopt an Embryo?
1. Meet the "snowflake babies," adopted as embryos. "As the use of IVF grows, so, too, will the number of embryos in storage. Physicians and patients reduce costs and patient discomfort by minimizing...
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Warren Buffett Shuts Down One of the Dirtiest Power Plants in the U.S.
When Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway acquired Nevada’s biggest utility in 2013, it also picked up Reid Gardner, a 557-megawatt coal-fired power plant outside of Las Vegas that regularly tops lists...
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The Case for Rebooting the Network Neutrality Debate
The Internet uproar about network neutrality tends to come in waves. Right now we’re riding the crest of one. In the two weeks since Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal...
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EBay Wants to Be a Digital Magazine of Things
Today, everybody's in the content business. But it wasn't always so. In the final years of the last millennium, a print catalog for a teen retailer called Delia*s started showing up addressed to me. I...
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The Case Against Mars
1. The case against going to Mars. "The uncomfortable truth is that, despite the technical tour-de-force of our robotic reconnaissance, looking for water on Mars has become one of the most humdrum...
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All the World's Glaciers, Mapped
There are, at the moment, nearly 200,000 glaciers on Earth. They have a volume of nearly 106,000 miles cubed, and cover an area of about 453,000 miles squared. This means they cover an area roughly...
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An Acid-Spewing ATM That Protects Itself From Thieves
Defense can be a messy business in the natural world. There are suicidal blast ants that explode, horror frogs that create makeshift claws out of their own broken bones, and bombardier beetles that...
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Why the French are Building Solar Power Plants in California
For most of the past decade, if you put solar panels on your roof or built a massive megawatt photovoltaic power plant, the federal government slashed the cost by 30 percent in the form of a tax...
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What Is a Book?
BookTraces is a new project to track down the human markings in 19th-century books that, in the era of digitization, will (at best) end up in deep storage throughout the nation's library system. The...
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Why the Official Explanation of MH370’s Demise Doesn’t Hold Up
Investigators searching for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight were ebullient when they detected what sounded like signals from the plane’s black boxes. This was a month ago, and it seemed just a...
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Fairness in Break Ups: An Algorithm
Editor's note: We have a guest editor! Meet Virginia Hughes, an excellent science writer who (mostly) covers genes, brains, and drugs. She's got a new weekly newsletter for great science writing called...
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Offshore Wind Farms Could Supply Much of the U.S.'s Electricity (If They Ever...
When I flew into Copenhagen in 2007, the jet passed over a gleaming array of white wind turbines arranged in a necklace in the city’s harbor. Since then, Denmark’s offshore wind farm building boom has...
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How Inkjet Printers Are Changing the Art of Counterfeit Money
The U.S. government recouped more than $88 million in counterfeit currency last year, and more than half of it was made on regular old inkjet or laser printers. That's according to Bloomberg, which...
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For the First Time, We Have a Detailed Model of the Universe
It is, if you except the powers of human memory, the closest thing we have to a time machine. Scientists have created the first realistic model of the universe, capable of recreating 13 billion years...
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The Hacker Who Worked on a Navy Nuclear Aircraft Carrier
Nicholas Knight and his hacker crew, Digi7al, were a lot like other hacking crews. According to a Federal indictment filed this week, they broke into computers, took information, posted it, and boasted...
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Our Sun Has a Sister
The ancient Egyptians called it Ra. The ancient Greeks called it Helios. The ancient Mayans called it Kinich Ahau. The ancient Germans called it Sól. Our longest-standing and most deeply held myths...
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Finally, a Movie Portrays Social Media as Something Other Than Evil
In recent years, a new problem has emerged for filmmakers: how to represent digital communication onscreen. People go to the movies to see actors express emotions, but in the real world, we...
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GPS Bullets Could Make High-Speed Car Chases Obsolete
1. The obsolescence of the car chase. "Over the past few years, companies like Starchase have begun developing technologies like its 'GPS bullet' pursuit management system, which the company describes...
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Apple + Beats = Genius
Tech reporters used to complain that Apple wasn't spending its $100+ billion in cash. Now we're complaining that Apple is spending too much. Journalists really are wretched people. Apple is buying...
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Why Google is Making a Big Deal Over a Little Solar Device
President Barack Obama on Friday announced an initiative to boost adoption of renewable energy, including commitments from big box retailers like Wal-Mart to double the number of stores with solar...
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