Gunman 'Tentatively' Identified in Oregon Shooting

A masked gunman who opened fire in the crowded Clackamas Town Center mall in suburban Portland, Ore., killing two individuals before killing himself, has been "tentatively" identified by police, though they have not yet released his name.The shooter, wearing a white hockey mask, black clothing, and a bullet proof vest, tore through the mall around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, entering...

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'Biology is a manufacturing capability'

Soon we'll be able to engineer living things with mechanical precision, says Tom Knight, father of synthetic biology How is synthetic biology different from biotechnology?The main difference is the degree of control. Engineers want...

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Number of fallen casement windows hits new high

SINGAPORE: The number of fallen windows has risen since 2010, with an average increase of eight to nine cases per year. There were 50 cases in 2010, 58 cases in 2011 and 67 cases up till November this year.A joint statement by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) and Housing and Development Board (HDB) said the increase is largely due to the number of fallen casement windows.Thirty-seven...

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New Twitter (with filters) not available yet for iPhone

Twitter on Monday released a new version of its mobile app that allows users to filter their photos, a step that directly challenges Instagram. However, while Twitter said the version would be available for both Android and iPhone, the iPhone version has yet to appear in the App Store.(Credit:Twitter)Twitter said today that it was releasing a new version of its iPhone andAndroid apps that would allow...

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U.K. Dash for Shale Gas a Test for Global Fracking

Thomas K. Grose in London The starting gun has sounded for the United Kingdom's "dash for gas," as the media here have dubbed it.As early as this week, a moratorium on shale gas production is expected to be lifted. And plans to streamline and speed the regulatory process through a new Office for Unconventional Gas and Oil were unveiled last week in the annual autumn budget statement by...

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Woman Gets Life for Lottery Winner's Murder

DeeDee Moore, the Tampa woman accused of swindling and then killing lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare, was found guilty today of first degree murder and other charges, after she declined to take the stand and the defense rested without calling a single witness.In addition to the murder charge, Moore was also found guilty of possessing and discharging a firearm resulting in...

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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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