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New report finds huge decline in lower extremity amputations in past decade

Which limb do you prefer? If you’re like most members of our species, you prefer your right hand for most tasks.

If 2012 is the year of Big Data, it will likely be the year vendors and consultants start to over-promise, under-deliver, and put processes in motion that will generate insights and potential risks for years to come. This year will be the year of Big Data.

"We're rapidly moving to a world beyond plastic," says Ed McLaughlin. "In many ways, plastic is just convenient packaging." McLaughlin heads up emerging payments at MasterCard, and he's tasked with thinking big on the future of transaction technology. His group has dreamed up loads of creative ways to accept payments, from hacking an Xbox Kinect to pay-by-hand motion, to implanting NFC tech in ultrabooks , to scanning irises to prevent credit card fraud.

A new report says it may. Dr. Holly Phillips reports.

Thinking, Fast and Slow [More]

A fighter pilot heads back to base after a long mission, feeling spent. A warning light flashes on the control panel

Are you cut out to make the sale?

BEIJING (Reuters) - A cancer-causing cadmium discharge from a mining company has polluted a long stretch of two rivers in southern China, and officials warned some 3.7 million people of Liuzhou in the Guangxi region to avoid drinking water from the river, state media reported on Friday. Pollution of waterways by toxic run-offs from factories and farms is a pressing issue in China, prompting authorities to call for policy tightening, though the problem shows no sign of going away.

Carmakers learned years ago it's not easy to make a practical hydrogen fuel cell. Yet hydrogen fuel cells do work, and they're greener than batteries.

The social media analytics company Bluefin Labs figures out what people are saying about TV on social media--now they'll try to figure out why they're saying it. Pretend, for a moment, that popularity can be quantified.

If you are what you eat, can you eat yourself unhappy? Experts seem to think so

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By Jo Marchant of Nature magazine Prion diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) are able to jump species much more easily than previously thought.

Google's new Public Alerts are a continuation of the role Google took in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in 2011. However, instead of simply providing ad-hoc portals to collated and relevant data post-disaster, Google's Crisis Response Team, a new release says , will work to "surface emergency information through the online tools you use every day, when that information is relevant and useful." Meaning if there's a hurricane headed your way, Google will make sure you know it somehow. But how much of this is about altruism?