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MIAMI -- There's only one building in Florida that can withstand the biggest and baddest of all hurricanes -- the Category 5, with winds of at least 165 mph (266 kph) -- and it's a concrete bunker along an unglamorous stretch of road in South Florida called the National Hurricane Center (NHC). The NHC never closes. Here, weather forecasters work around the clock, 365 days a year, tracking threatening storms in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

A brief encounter between a European spacecraft and a large asteroid has revealed that the space rock is likely a mostly intact leftover from the planetary formation process. But the flyby raised more questions than it answered, providing tantalizing but somewhat puzzling hints about the asteroid's makeup and internal structure

The launch of NASA's newest Earth-observing spacecraft today (Oct. 28) could not have gone more smoothly, researchers and officials said. The $1.5 billion NPP weather and climate satellite blazed a white-hot trail through the predawn California sky this morning, ticking off milestones like clockwork as it climbed.

ELKINS, W.Va.

The recent Nature paper from Jef Boeke’s group , “ Synthetic chromosome arms function in yeast and generate phenotypic diversity by design ,” begins with an appropriately futuristic sentence: “The first phase of any genome engineering project is design.” While there have been efforts to redesign viral genomes and chemically synthesize bacterial genomes , whole genomes of living cells are not yet something that can readily be designed from scratch. This new paper (excellently reviewed by Lab Rat a while back) approaches the design of genomes in a fascinating way; instead of trying to decide in advance what a good engineered/engineerable genome looks like or simply copying an existing genome, they designed the sequence of one arm of a yeast chromosome (about 90,000 base pairs) with built-in genetic flexibility, enabling future experiments and future evolution. [More]

Are humans the only species with enough smarts to craft a language? Most of us believe that we are. Although many animals have their own form of communication, none has the depth or versatility heard in human speech.

The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott: Unseen Images from the Legendary Antarctic Expedition by David M. Wilson.

Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man by Mark Changizi. BenBella Books, 2011 [More]

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Lankasana, a 23-year-old Maasai warrior, sports long, ochre-stained, braided hair extensions and carries a bow and arrow, a short sword and a steel-tipped spear.

By Chris Gallagher TOKYO (Reuters) - The film "Land of Oblivion" may revolve around victims of the Chernobyl disaster a quarter of a century ago, but Japanese audiences will see striking parallels with current-day headlines following the Fukushima nuclear crisis. [More]

By Quirin Schiermeier of Nature magazine Climate scientists warn that critical gaps in climate data could open up after the current generation of Earth-observation satellites comes to the end of its life, with the next generation nowhere near ready to take over. The problem is exacerbated by the lack of an adequate replacement for a pair of Earth-observation satellites, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory and Glory, which failed on launch in the past two years. Earth-observation programs will fail to provide the data continuity required for climate science unless they are more adequately managed and supported, Kevin Trenberth, a senior researcher at the U.S

By Edwin Cartlidge of Nature magazine This year's hunt for the Higgs boson is drawing to a close. [More]

By Martin Petty and Ploy Ten Kate BANGKOK (Reuters) - As Thailand's capital braces for a surge of water, its residents are fighting to both keep it at bay and find enough of it to drink. [More]

NOVEMBER 1961 Teaching Machines [More]