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Hardcore Parkour (With Robots)
In 1954, George Devol created the first modern robot, programmable and digitally operated. In 1988, 15-year-old Frenchman David Belle created the sport of Parkour. And in 2013, the University of...
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This Tiny Blue Dot on Mars Is Our Rover
There's something special about our robots orbiting other planets seeing our other robots down on the surface. In a new, color-enhanced photo, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment Camera on...
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The iPad Is Your New Bicycle
Alexis C. Madrigal Yesterday's Apple earnings report revealed a significant drop-off in iPad sales, from 17 million in the same quarter last year to 14.6 million this spring. Is the high price keeping...
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The Pond at the North Pole
The North Pole is supposed to be icy. It's where Santa and polar bears live, after all. But, right now, there's a small lake at the North Pole. Here's an image from the wide-angle camera trained on a...
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'Friend,' as a Verb, Is 800 Years Old
"Greetings, will ye friende me?" (Shutterstock/Igor Bulgarin)"Disorder, that hath spoil'd us, friend us now!" That was Shakespeare. Writing in Henry V. In 1599. Mark Zuckerberg, in other words, was not...
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Why Do Women Disapprove of Drone Strikes So Much More Than Men Do?
Pew's out with an international poll that shows, across countries and overall levels of support, a striking gender gap exists on support for American drone strikes. Women were much less likely to...
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NASA's Newest Space Telescope Sends Back Its First Images of the Sun, and...
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics/NASA Last month, NASA launched a new telescope, known as IRIS, into space to study the sun. Today we got our first glimpse of what IRIS is seeing, and ......
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Could the Government Get a Search Warrant for Your Thoughts?
U.S. National Library of Medicine We don't have a mind reading machine. But what if we one day did? The technique of functional MRI (fMRI), which measures changes in localized brain activity over time,...
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Privacy
Long before Edward Snowden made his revelations about the workings of the NSA, privacy was a source of anxiety to many Americans -- and to many people around the world. Most of us have a sense that...
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Does the World's Oldest Fabric Have a Future in High Fashion?
Michael Scaturro On a hot summer day during Berlin's biannual fashion week, models stood on podiums in a decommissioned 1960s concrete modernist church remade into an exhibition space. Bobby Kolade's...
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A Map of American Electricity Use in 1921
It's hard to remember a time when not everyone had electricity, and when those that did used it sparingly. That's because from about 1900 to 1965 or so, the electric power industry pushed the price of...
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Google's New TV Gadget, the Chromecast
What I'm ChromecastingFor the past couple days, I've been playing with Google's new $35 device for your TV, the Chromecast. It works simply: You plug it into the back of your TV and a power source,...
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From the Supreme Court Steps to a Museum's Collection, via Facebook
NMAJH/Facebook Last week a container arrived at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. Inside was the newest piece in the museum's permanent collection, and, in a sense, the...
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Asiana 214: Airplane as Hero, and Other Analyses
Three weeks after the crash, I hear from several travelers that debris from Asiana 214 is still visible at SFO, apparently as investigators keep working through the clues. I am entering my last...
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Circa 1968, Even Killer Whales Dug the Rolling Stones
Reuters In the Pacific Northwest, killer whales have always been easy to spot traversing the coast, but in the latter half of the 1960s, humans began to capture the marine mammals for public display....
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The Origin of the Word 'Dongle': 7 Leading Theories
Shutterstock/Daniel GaleWant to connect your laptop computer to a television? You'll need a dongle. Want to track your fitness habits -- or your dog's? Buy a dongle. Trying Chromecast? You'll also be...
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The Future of Transportation: Own an EV, Get Access to an SUV
The hybrid future of transportation.Perhaps the biggest worry you hear about electric vehicles is "range anxiety." And yet, on the "vast majority" of days, people in the United States drive fewer than...
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Why NSA Surveillance Will Be More Damaging Than You Think
This column over the weekend, by the British academic John Naughton in the Guardian, takes us one more step in assessing the damage to American interests in the broadest sense-- commercial, strategic,...
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The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish
Paul J. Heald Last year I wrote about some very interesting research being done by Paul J. Heald at the University of Illinois, based on software that crawled Amazon for a random selection of books. At...
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Astro Mad Men: NASA's 1960s Campaign to Win America's Heart
The Mercury Seven, fulfilling their contractual obligation (Life)After successfully completing the flight that would make him the first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn gave a speech at his...
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