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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Tortoiseshell craftsmen adapt to new century

PARIS: What did Yves Saint Laurent, Jackie Kennedy and the architect Le Corbusier have in common? Their eyewear, for one, as clients of the luxury French tortoiseshell artisan, Bonnet.Four decades after the trade in tortoiseshell was banned under the 1973 CITES convention, the fourth-generation family firm sees itself as custodian of a rare craft, fashioning made-to-measure spectacles...

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IBM pushes silicon photonics with on-chip optics

This close-up photo shows an IBM chip wired up with both electrical links, shown in yellow, and optical waveguides, shown in blue. Conventional computers today transfer data with electrons traveling along electrical links, but researchers hope higher data-transfer speeds can be achieved by sending photons on optical links.(Credit:IBM Research)IBM has advanced the technology of silicon photonics, fabricating...

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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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Storm Bopha returns to Philippines

MANILA: Heavy rain brought flooding fears in the north of the storm-battered Philippines as Typhoon Bopha returned Sunday, days after slamming into the south of the country and leaving almost 1,400 dead or missing.While the powerful typhoon had weakened to a tropical storm, it was still causing downpours in the north even as hundreds in the south struggled to recover from its fury, said...

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Handcuffs that give you an electric shock?

Progress?(Credit:Patent Bolt)Sometimes an invention comes along that makes you excited about the future.For a long time, it seems that handcuffs have been stuck in the movies of old. They restrain you, but, odd for our interactive world, that's all they seem to do.Might I tempt you toward futuristic handcuffs that will offer you a small involuntary judder?I am grateful to Gizmodo for discovering that...

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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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