Herbal Viagra actually contains the real thing

IF IT looks too good to be true, it probably is. Several "herbal remedies" for erectile dysfunction sold online actually contain the active ingredient from Viagra. Michael Lamb at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and colleagues purchased 10...

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Education Minister urges schools to maintain long-term partnerships

SINGAPORE: Singapore Education Minister Heng Swee Keat has urged schools here to maintain long-term partnerships, which will enrich the community. He was speaking at Yishun Junior College's (YJC) Celebrating Values Day on Saturday.It is a carnival to raise funds for charities such as the President's Challenge and Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore.YJC has roped in partners...

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Audiophiliac readers' show off their hi-fis and home theaters

Reader Al F.'s old Apogree speakers and Krell amplifiers.(Credit:Al F.)I never had any doubt that readers of this blog have the coolest systems, but the magnitude of the flood of homemade speakers, desktop systems, headphones, and all sorts of groovy turntables totally knocked me out. There's some sweet gear here, so click to the slideshow and check out the systems. Thanks to all who sent JPEGs --...

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We Didn’t Domesticate Dogs. They Domesticated Us.

In the story of how the dog came in from the cold and onto our sofas, we tend to give ourselves a little too much credit. The most common assumption is that some hunter-gatherer with a soft spot for cuteness found some wolf puppies and adopted them. Over time, these tamed wolves would have shown their prowess at hunting, so humans kept them around the campfire until they evolved into dogs....

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Rescuers Search for Man as Fla. Sinkhole Grows

Rescuers early Saturday morning returned to the site where a sinkhole swallowed a Florida man in his bedroom after the home's foundation collapsed.Jeff Bush was in his bedroom when a sinkhole opened up and trapped him underneath his home at 11 p.m. Thursday night.While the sinkhole was initially estimated to be 15 feet deep on Thursday night, the chasm has continued to grow. Officials...

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Smartphone projector breathes life into storybooks

Hal Hodson, technology reporter!--By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. -->!-- This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soonas the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only afterthe rest of the HTML is processed and the...

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US manufacturing rises for 3rd straight month: ISM

WASHINGTON, March 1, 2013 (AFP) - US manufacturing activity expanded in February for the third month in a row, hitting the highest level since 2011, according to the ISM survey of purchasing managers released Friday.The Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing sector index rose to 54.2 from 53.1 in January, boosted by a 4.5 percent surge in new orders.Manufacturing appeared to be...

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Picture this: Photosynth debuts for Windows Phone 8

Photosynth is now available for Windows Phone 8. (Credit:Photosynth) Microsoft's Windows Phone app store has just gotten a little bigger, thanks to the addition of Photosynth. The software giant said Photosynth, a 3-D panorama photo app, has now debuted for the latest version of Microsoft's smartphone operating system. It's available for free from the Windows Phone Store. The app allows users to stitch...

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Stinkbug Threat Has Farmers Worried

Part of our weekly "In Focus" series—stepping back, looking closer.Maryland farmer Nathan Milburn recalls his first encounter.It was before dawn one morning in summer 2010, and he was at a gas station near his farm, fueling up for the day. Glancing at the light above the pump, something caught his eye."Thousands of something," Milburn remembers.Though he'd never actually seen a brown marmorated...

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Obama, Congress Fail to Avert Sequester Cuts

President Obama and congressional leaders today failed to reach a breakthrough to avert a sweeping package of automatic spending cuts, setting into motion $85 billion of across-the-board belt-tightening that neither had wanted to see.Obama met for just over an hour at the White House Friday with Republican leaders House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell...

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The self: Why are you like you are?

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Pope leaves Vatican on historic final day

VATICAN CITY: Pope Benedict XVI left the Vatican on Thursday for the last time as pontiff before he steps down as leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, becoming the first pope to resign in 700 years.Benedict boarded a white helicopter emblazoned with the Vatican flag for the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo near Rome, flying over the Vatican for the last time as pope.As...

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iCloud nearly back to normal after early morning outage

Apple's iCloud status at 8:41 a.m. PT(Credit:Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Apple's iCloud had a major outage this morning, but things are slowly but surely returning to normal.The outage was reported this morning on Apple's Status page, showing that 11 percent of users were affected. All of iCloud's services, including Mail support, Notes, and sign-in weren't working. Since then, the services have...

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Mars Missions: A Time Line of Success and Failure

Humans have been thinking about visiting Mars—or being visited by Martians—for more than a century. On Wednesday, a group funded by businessman Dennis Tito announced its intention to launch a manned flyby mission to Mars in 2018.Our awareness of Mars dates back millennia, while our modern picture of the red planet emerged in the 1870s, when Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli claimed...

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Benedict Departs Vatican for the Last Time as Pope

Pope Benedict XVI bade his final farewell to the faithful today, lifting off from the Vatican in a white helicopter as the first pope to resign in six centuries.Just before 5 p.m. local time, Benedict, 85, walked out of the Vatican for the last time as pope, waving to a cheering crowd in the Courtyard of San Damaso as he entered a black Mercedes for the short drive to a nearby...

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Live hologram reveals moving people trapped in a fire

Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV!--By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and Cfound at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. -->Firefighters can see through smoke thanks to thermal imaging helmetsbut now, for the first time, they can also make out moving people trapped behind flames. Created by Pietro Ferraro and colleagues from the...

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New Singapore ambassadors to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland

SINGAPORE: The government has appointed Mr Wong Kwok Pun as Singapore's first resident Ambassador to the State of Qatar, Mr Lawrence Anderson as Singapore's next Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Mr Tee Tua Ba as Singapore's Ambassador to Switzerland (resident in Singapore). Mr Wong and Mr Anderson will assume their post on 17 March 2013 and 30 March 2013 respectively.Mr...

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Sorry, LTE compatibility in the U.S. still years away

Unfortunately, AT&T's iPhone 5 is only LTE at AT&T. (Credit:CNET)BARCELONA, Spain--Here's the good news: the U.S. wireless industry is working to ensure that you'll eventually be able to take your LTE-enabled phone from one carrier to another and get the same experience.The bad news: it likely won't happen for a few years.That's according to T-Mobile Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray, who...

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A History of Balloon Crashes

A hot-air balloon exploded in Egypt yesterday as it carried 19 people over ancient ruins near Luxor. The cause is believed to be a torn gas hose. In Egypt as in many other countries, balloon rides are a popular way to sightsee. (Read about unmanned flight in National Geographic magazine.)The sport of hot-air ballooning dates to 1783, when a French balloon took to the skies with a sheep,...

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Bring on the Cuts: Some Want the Sequester

Mark Lucas wouldn't mind seeing America's defense budget cut by billions."There's quite a bit of waste within the military," Lucas, who serves as Iowa state director for the conservative group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), told ABC News. "Being in there for 10 years, I've seen quite a bit of it."With the budget sequester set to kick in on Friday, the former Army ranger is among...

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Curiosity's spills add thrills to the Mars life hunts

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JPMorgan to slash 19,000 jobs by end-2014

NEW YORK: US banking giant JPMorgan Chase plans to axe up to 19,000 jobs by the end of 2014 as it seeks to rein in costs, the company said Tuesday in an investor presentation.JPMorgan Chase intends the majority of the cuts -- between 13,000 to 15,000 -- in the mortgage banking division, where the company spent $9.1 billion in 2012.Another 3,000 to 4,000 jobs will be eliminated in the non-mortgage...

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Plug in a BeeWi Mobot to control your gadgets while you're out

BARCELONA, Spain--Time for a new meaning to 'plug and play': the BeeWi Mobot is a power plug that not only controls the gadgets in your home, but also tells you what's going on while you're out, thanks to a SIM card and an iPhone app. The Mobot is a prototype shown off by BeeWi at mobile phone show Mobile World Congress. Plug it into a power socket, then plug an electrical appliance or gadget into...

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Sharks Warn Off Predators By Wielding Light Sabers

Diminutive deep-sea sharks illuminate spines on their backs like light sabers to warn potential predators that they could get a sharp mouthful, a new study suggests.Paradoxically, the sharks seem to produce light both to hide and to be conspicuous—a first in the world of glowing sharks. (See photos of other sea creatures that glow.)"Three years ago we showed that velvet belly lanternsharks...

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'93 WTC Bombing Crushed Lives, Not Memories

Edward Smith remembers vividly the call from the morgue 20 years ago today, that his pregnant wife had died in the World Trade Center bombing hours before she was supposed to start her maternity leave."It seems like kind of yesterday sometimes," he told ABC News, "but it seems like a long time ago, too."Today marks the 20th anniversary of the 1993 WTC bombing, which was overshadowed...

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The great illusion of the self

(Image: Darren Hopes)As you wake up each morning, hazy and disoriented, you gradually become aware of the rustling of the sheets, sense their texture and squint at the light. One aspect of your self has reassembled: the first-person observer of reality, inhabiting a human body. As wakefulness grows, so does your sense of having a past, a personality and motivations. Your self is complete, as both...

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UN rights chief, nations condemn Security Council on Syria

GENEVA: The UN human rights chief and several nations criticised the Security Council Monday for failing to take action to halt spiralling violence in Syria and bring to justice perpetrators of abuses in the conflict."The Security Council has so far failed with regard to Syria," Navi Pillay told ministers at the start of a regular UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva.Pillay said her...

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Tesla CEO: NYT review cost us $100M in value -- Bloomberg

Tesla's Model S(Credit:Wayne Cunningham/CNET) The New York Times/Tesla debacle may have cost the car maker $100 million in value, Tesla's CEO told Bloomberg. Elon Musk, speaking on Bloomberg TV, said "a lot" of people canceled orders for Tesla's Model S following a scathing New York Times review. "It probably affected us to the tune of tens of millions, to the order of $100 million, so it's not...

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Picture Archive: Dorothy Lamour and Jiggs, Circa 1938

Dorothy Lamour, most famous for her Road to ... series of movies with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, never won an Oscar. In her 50-plus-year career as an actress, she never even got nominated.Neither did Jiggs the chimpanzee, pictured here with Lamour on the set of Her Jungle Love in a photo published in the 1938 National Geographic story "Monkey Folk."No animal has ever been nominated for...

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Best Moments From the Academy Awards

Host Seth MacFarlane took the stage at the 2013 Oscars with an opening monologue revealing he was ready to poke fun at the star-studded audience."The quest to make Tommy Lee Jones laugh begins now," he said.But it wasn't too long before MacFarlane was interrupted. William Shatner, dressed as his iconic character Captain Kirk from "Star Trek," descended on the stage to warn MacFarlane that he...

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New blood test finds elusive fetal gene problem

A NEW non-invasive blood test for pregnant women could make it easier to catch abnormalities before their child is born. Human cells should have two copies of each chromosome but sometimes the division is uneven. Existing tests count the fragments of placental...

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Football: Man City leave Chelsea trailing, Newcastle edge Saints

LONDON: Manchester City galvanised their grip on second place in the Premier League and trimmed Manchester United's lead back to 12 points with a 2-0 victory at home to nearest rivals Chelsea on Sunday.After Chelsea's Frank Lampard had seen a penalty saved by England colleague Joe Hart, City prevailed through a pair of fine second-half goals from man-of-the-match Yaya Toure and substitute...

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