PhysOrg.com

Iran launches home-built satellite rocket
Iran said it had launched a rocket carrying a test-satellite into space on Sunday, in a move that could further exacerbate tensions with the West over its nuclear drive.

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'Virtual archaeologist' reconnects fragments of an ancient civilization
(PhysOrg.com) -- For several decades, archaeologists in Greece have been painstakingly attempting to reconstruct wall paintings that hold valuable clues to the ancient culture of Thera, an island civilization that was buried under volcanic ash more than 3,500 years ago.

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Intel Unveils Extensible Host Controller Interface Draft Specification to Support USB 3.0 Architecture
Intel Corporation today announced the availability of the Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) draft specification revision 0.9 in support of the USB 3.0 architecture, also known as SuperSpeed USB. The xHCI draft specification provides a standardized method for USB 3.0 host controllers to communicate with the USB 3.0 software stack.

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Yale Professor wins Godel Prize for showing how computer algorithms solve problems
Daniel A. Spielman, professor of applied mathematics and computer science at Yale, has been awarded the prestigious Gödel Prize for developing a technique, known as Smoothed Analysis, that helps predict the success of problem-solving with real data and computers. He shared the prize with Shang-Hua Teng, professor of computer science at Boston University.

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Strange molecule in the sky cleans acid rain, scientists discover
Researchers have discovered an unusual molecule that is essential to the atmosphere's ability to break down pollutants, especially the compounds that cause acid rain. It's the unusual chemistry facilitated by this molecule, however, that will attract the most attention from scientists.

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AMD Launches ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 -- World's Fastest Graphics Card
AMD today announced the world`s fastest graphics card, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, advancing visual computing ever closer to eye-definition computing gaming and cinematic experiences and delivering a whopping 2.4 teraFLOPS of processing power. Also announced today is the ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 graphics card, delivering blistering performance at a compelling price point.

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'Cloud computing' trend heightens privacy risks
A US military computer science professor has warned that a trend to push software into the "clouds" exacerbates privacy risks as people trust information to the Internet.

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From 3-D to 6-D: Researchers developing super-realistic image system
(PhysOrg.com) -- By producing "6-D" images, an MIT professor and colleagues are creating unusually realistic pictures that not only have a full three-dimensional appearance, but also respond to their environment, producing natural shadows and highlights depending on the direction and intensity of the illumination around them.

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Universally speaking, Earthlings share a nice neighborhood
We don't have spacecraft to take us outside our solar system--not yet, at least. Still, astronomers thought they had a pretty good understanding of how our solar system formed and in turn, how others formed. In the last dozen years, nearly 300 exoplanets have been discovered. Are the solar systems in which they reside indeed like our own?

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New computer simulations show how special the solar system is
Prevailing theoretical models attempting to explain the formation of the solar system have assumed it to be average in every way. Now a new study by Northwestern University astronomers, using recent data from the 300 exoplanets discovered orbiting other stars, turns that view on its head.

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