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Self-folding structure could slash energy use in buildings

Princeton student Denisa Buzatu's vision for an environmentally sustainable building is a sort of shape-shifting origami façade. For her senior thesis, Buzatu, a civil and environmental engineering...

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Malays the earliest to practice farming in the Sundaland

Research by archaeologists showed the Malays were the first farmers who cultivated rice and domesticated livestock in the Sunda continent, a massive sunken peninsula that today formed the Java Sea,...

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Tech firms, activists press US on encryption

Some 140 tech companies, civil liberties and privacy activists urged the White House Tuesday to pull back efforts to weaken encryption or include law enforcement "backdoors" on technology products.

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Toward noninvasive identification of objects' structural defects

Last summer, MIT researchers published a paper describing an algorithm that can recover intelligible speech from the analysis of the minute vibrations of objects in video captured through soundproof...

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Surveillance powers to lapse without Senate action Sunday

A midnight deadline drew near for senators meeting in an extraordinary Sunday session to extend surveillance programs, but a lapse seemed unavoidable and intelligence officials worried about giving...

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Congress sends NSA phone-records bill to president

Congress approved sweeping changes Tuesday to surveillance laws enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks, eliminating the National Security Agency's disputed bulk phone-records collection program and...

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Intelligent life in the universe? Phone home, dammit!

We've been conditioned by television and movies to accept the likelihood of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. "Of course there's intelligent life out there; I saw it last week on Star Trek."...

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Privacy groups quit US talks on facial recognition tech

Nine US privacy groups have dropped out of talks on voluntary standards for facial recognition technology, after failing to agree on a code on how it could be deployed.

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Creature's 'dactyl club' filters shear waves to resist damage

The "smasher" peacock mantis shrimp is able to repeatedly pummel the shells of prey using a bizarre hammer-like appendage that, new research shows, can withstand rapid-fire blows by neutralizing...

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Hackers attack Canada government website: minister

The Canadian government's public website for applying for social services and downloading official forms was briefly shut down Wednesday in a cyberattack, a senior minister said.

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Head Start program played anti-segregation role in the Deep South

A federal preschool program did more than improve educational opportunities for poor children in Mississippi during the 1960s. The program also gave a political and economic boost to the state's civil...

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Canada spy agency website hacked

Hackers shut down the Canadian intelligence agency's website Tuesday, officials said.

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VMWare, Carahsoft pay $75.5M to settle overcharging claims

VMware Inc. and Carahsoft Technology Corporation have agreed to pay $75.5 million to settle claims they overcharged the government.

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New test chamber making possible research into challenging 'geotechnical'...

A test chamber developed at Purdue University allows engineers to simulate precisely what happens to soil underground during the installation of piles and other structural elements, a research tool for...

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Student archeologists report from field, add to knowledge of ancient Greece

Over the last three weeks, every new day has been an adventure for a group of University of Missouri–St. Louis students in Greece. And each of those days starts at the crack of dawn.

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Helping plants fight off pathogens by enhancing their immune systems

Civilization as it is known today could not have evolved, nor can it survive, without an adequate food supply. – Norman Borlaug

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Partnership makes algebra accessible north and south of the border

We have all been flummoxed by some kind of math problem, staring blankly at the instructions, muttering "It's all Greek to me."

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ACLU asks appeals court to halt NSA phone record collection

Civil liberties groups asked a federal appeals court Tuesday to again strike down as unconstitutional a portion of a law used by the government to justify the collection and storage of Americans' phone...

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US bill requiring carriers to report 'terror' criticized

A coalition including civil liberties and human rights activists urged US lawmakers Tuesday to reject a bill that would require Internet companies to report signs of "terrorist activity" on their...

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Dream of free and open Internet dying, lawyer says

The dream of a free and open Internet is slowly being killed by overregulation, censorship and bad laws that don't stop the right people, a top computer crime defense lawyer says.

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