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Improved measurements of different elements and their isotopes have changed the official atomic weights of 19 elements

The changes are relatively small, and they're part of a regular effort to update atomic weights

Every atom of an element

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has long relied on technology to help him connect with the outside world despite the degenerative motor neuron disease he has battled for the past 50 years

a highly respected computer scientist indicated at last week’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that he and his team may be close to a breakthrough that could boost the rate at which the physicist communicates, which has fallen to a mere one word per minute in recent years.

For the past decade Hawking has used a voluntary twitch of his cheek muscle to compose words and sentences one letter at a time that are expressed through a speech-generation device connected to his computer.

application for NTT DoCoMo subscribers will give two-way voice and text readouts of conversations between Japanese speakers and those talking in English, Chinese or Korean with a several-second delay

a free application that can be used on smartphones and tablet computers with the Android operating system

Customers will also be able to call landlines using the service, it said, adding that voice-to-text readouts will soon be available in French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Thai

a suite of apps that turn a conventional phone running Android into a new way to use the phone

Instead of the usual mass of icons, the Georgie, as the company calls it, comes with a simple menu that offers auditory feedback and features that are important and useful to those who cannot see.

real world useful applications such as telling the user which direction they are facing, or where the nearest bus stop is

Surgery book

In 1575, printing of Ambroise Paré's book Oeuvres Complètes (Complete Works) was finished, but its publication was opposed by establishment physicians. His previous texts on surgery had popularized a new way to treat gunshot wounds without cauterisation, reintroduced the ligature in amputation, and improved midwifery techniques. These many writings were gathered together in this one new volume, which spread his teachings throughout the world. It remained in print for a century and ran to thirteen editions. He wrote in French instead of Latin with practical, common sense so that many barber-surgeons, who (like Paré) were unable to interpret Latin, had access to medical knowledge otherwise unavailable from Latin texts

During archaeological excavations in the Kings' Valley in Upper Egypt a team of researchers

found one of the world's oldest ancient Egyptian sun dials

During this year's excavations the researchers found a flattened piece of limestone (so-called Ostracon) on which a semicircle in black color had been drawn

Sociologists

claim in a paper they've had published

that when teachers use a red pen to add comments to student papers, students perceive them more negatively than if they use another color pen

Most people believe they can multitask effectively, but a

study indicates that people who multitask the most – including talking on a cell phone while driving – are least capable of doing so.

data suggest the people talking on cell phones while driving are people who probably shouldn't. We showed that people who multitask the most are those who appear to be the least capable of multitasking effectively

Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an international team of researchers has discovered a record-breaking cluster of quasars—young active galaxies

the Milky Way, is just a hundred thousand light-years across

the local supercluster of galaxies in which it's located, the Virgo Cluster, is only a hundred million light-years wide

last known largely unexcavated Maya megacity, archaeologists have uncovered the only known mural adorning an ancient Maya house

still vibrant scene of a king and his retinue

walls are rife with calculations that helped ancient scribes track vast amounts of time

The mural represents the first Maya art to be found on the walls of a house

tiny glyphs all over the wall, bars and dots representing columns of numbers

the kind of thing that only appears in one place — the Dresden Codex, which the Maya wrote many centuries later

three more "very special" LEGO figurines are set to fly to the planet Jupiter with NASA's Juno spacecraft

specially-constructed LEGO Minifigures are of the Roman god Jupiter, his wife Juno, and "father of science" Galileo Galilei.

part of the Bricks in Space project

In an alliance with scholars and linguists, the Internet powerhouse on Wednesday introduced an Endangered Languages Project website where people can find, share, and store information about dialects in danger of disappearing.

diverse group of collaborators have already begun to contribute content ranging from 18th-century manuscripts to modern teaching tools like video and audio language samples and knowledge-sharing articles

endangeredlanguages.com is designed to let users upload video, audio, or text files and encourages them to memorialize recordings of rare dialects.

Pluto photographed (source)   In 1930, Clyde Tombaugh photographed the planet Pluto, the only planet discovered in the twentieth century, after a systematic search instigated by the predictions of other astronomers. Tombaugh was 24 years old when he made this discovery at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz.

2014 should be the year that Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) brings passengers on suborbital space flights

the company started off the year by successfully completing its third rocket-powered supersonic flight

after dozens of successful subsonic test flights

The six wheeled Yutu rover, which means ‘Jade Rabbit’, has “experienced a mechanical control abnormality” in a new report by China’s official government newspaper, The People’s Daily. Remove this ad

‘Jade Rabbit’ was traversing southwards from the landing site as the incident occurred just days ago – about six weeks into its planned 3 month moon roving expedition

very few details have emerged or been released by the Chinese government about Yutu’s condition or fate