Female lemurs avoid the wrong love in the dark

IT IS the ultimate voice-recognition system. Without ever meeting him, a female lemur still knows the call of her father. The ability to identify family members is important to avoid inbreeding. For large-brained mammals like apes that engage in complex...

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N. Korea extends rocket launch window

SEOUL: North Korea on Monday extended the window for its planned rocket launch by one week, in order to deal with a "technical deficiency" with the first stage of the carrier.The original December 10-22 window was extended to December 29, the Korean Committee of Space Technology said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.The statement stressed that scientists...

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Five lies your TV salesperson will tell you

Using the time-honored tactics of obfuscation, misdirection, and a little bit of fear, the people who try to sell you TVs can hit you with some heavy-duty lies. Now this isn't to say that all TV sales people are bad, nor that any necessarily do this out of malice (there's plenty of misinformation out there confused as truth). But when it's your dollar on the line, being prepared with some facts can...

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Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity

When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't...

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Fiscal Cliff Talks: Boehner, Obama Meet Face-to-Face

For the first time in more than three weeks, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met face-to-face today at the White House to talk about avoiding the fiscal cliff.White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest would offer no details saying only, "The lines of communication remain open."Erskine Bowles, the co-creator of a debt reducing plan, who was pessimistic...

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Kenyan elephant numbers plummet by 1000 in four years

IT'S a case of up then down for Kenya's second largest population of elephants. After a promising growth spurt, the elephants are now dying faster than they are being born. The decline is being blamed on illegal poaching, driven by Asia's demand for ivory. ...

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Field Hockey: Pakistan beat India for bronze

MELBOURNE: Pakistan won their first Champions Trophy medal since 2004, beating India 3-2 in the bronze medal play-off, depriving their arch-rivals of their first medal in more than 30 years.Pakistani champion Shakeel Abbasi said the bronze was as good as winning gold."It was a very important match for us because for the past eight years we haven't won a medal at the Champions Trophy,"...

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Did Twitter's founder reveal its would-be Instagram killer?

Photos tweeted today by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey may have been generated using the service's rumored photo filters.(Credit:Jack Dorsey)Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey may have dropped the first public proof that Twitter is getting ready to release its own photo filtering feature, a tool it hopes could help in its increasingly tense battle with Instagram.A report published today by All Things...

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Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity

When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't...

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Gay Marriage: Will Justices Follow Popular Opinion?

The Supreme Court's announcement that it would hear two cases challenging laws prohibiting same-sex marriage has reinvigorated one of the most hotly contentious social debates in American history, a debate that has been fueled by a dramatic change in attitudes.With some states taking significant steps towards legalizing gay marriage, the hearings come at a critical moment.This...

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