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Babies begin to learn about the connection between pictures and real objects by the time they are nine-months-old

The research found that babies can learn about a toy from a photograph of it well before their first birthday

"The study should interest any parent or caregiver who has ever read a picture book with an infant,"

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover performed a "mini-drill" operation Tuesday, April 29, on the rock target under consideration for the mission's third sample-collection drilling

This preparatory activity produced a hole about eight-tenths of an inch (2 centimeters) deep, as planned

The rover used several tools to examine the candidate site

In 2004, the discovery of what was believed to be the world's oldest seat of learning, the Library of Alexandria, was announced by Zahi Hawass, president of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities during a conference at the University of California. A Polish-Egyptian team had uncovered 13 lecture halls featuring an elevated podium for the lecturer. Such a complex of lecture halls had never before been found on any Mediterranean Greco-Roman site. Alexandria may be regarded as the birthplace of western science, where Euclid discovered the rules of geometry, Eratosthenes measured the diameter of the Earth and Ptolemy wrote the Almagest, the most influential scientific book about the nature of the Universe for 1,500 years

Oldest university unearthed

In 1936, the Dvorak typewriter keyboard was patented in the U.S. by Dvorak and Dealey (Patent No. 2,040,248). The efficiency experts August Dvorak (a cousin of the composer) and William Dealey studied the typewriter to determine that they could arrange the keys in a new way which would speed up the operators of the typewriter. They designed a keyboard to maximize efficiency by placing common letters on the home row, and make the stronger fingers of the hands do most of the work. By contrast, the original QWERTY layout was designed for the earlier, less efficient typewriters. Previously, speed would result in two type bars hitting each other in their travel, so the original keyboard was laid out to reduce collisions

First printed book

In 868, the first known dated printed book was the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist scripture. It was made as a 16-ft scroll with six sheets of text printed from wood blocks and one sheet with a woodcut showing the Buddha with disciples and a pair of cats. The sheets measured 12" by 30" and were pasted together. The date is known from a colophon at the end stating it was "printed on 11 May 868, by Wang Chieh, for free general distribution" and that it was dedicated to his parents. The scroll was one of about 1,130 bundles of manuscripts found a thousand years later, walled up in one of the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas in Turkestan. It is now one of the great treasures in the British Library

discovered dozens of so-called “hypervelocity stars” — single stars that break the stellar speed limit

The Virgo Cluster galaxy, M87, has ejected an entire star cluster, throwing it toward us at more than two million miles per hour.

Astronomers have found runaway stars before, but this is the first time we’ve found a runaway star cluster

of a hiker’s heel releases enough energy to illuminate a light bulb

Matt Stanton, an engineer and avid backpacker, created a shoe insole that stores it as electricity

Instead of using piezoelectric and other inefficient, bulky methods of generating electricity, the pair shrunk down components similar to those found in hand-cranked flashlights.

Physicists

have discovered that the ancient Egyptians used a clever trick to make it easier to transport heavy pyramid stones by sledge

The Egyptians moistened the sand over which the sledge moved.

The pocket-sized XStat

received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a first-of-its-kind medical dressing

This means that the U.S. Army, which funded development of the sponge-filled syringe, can now purchase XStat to be carried by military medics