Sleep and dreaming: Slumber at the flick of a switch

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Royal Bank of Scotland fined US$612m to settle Libor probe

LONDON : State-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland will pay fines totalling US$612 million (453 million euros) to US and British regulators to settle allegations of Libor interest rate rigging, it announced on Wednesday.RBS is the third bank to admit its part in the Libor affair after British rival Barclays and Swiss lender UBS.The investigations uncovered "wrongdoing" by 21 employees, predominantly...

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Ultraslim notebook shipments poised for growth in 2013

A look at ultraslim PC shipments between 2012 and 2017.(Credit:NPD Display Search)Ultraslim notebooks -- defined as x86-based PCs with screen sizes between 10 and 17 inches and thicknesses of no greater than 21mm -- are seeing shipments squeezed by display technology, a new study from NPD DisplaySearch has revealed. But that won't be enough to keep them down."The high-end specifications for touch...

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The Real Richard III

It's a question that actors from Laurence Olivier to Kevin Spacey have grappled with: What did Richard III, the villainous protagonist of Shakespeare's famous historical drama, really look and sound like?In the wake of this week's announcement by the University of Leicester that archaeologists have discovered the 15th-century British king's lost skeleton beneath a parking lot, news continues...

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US Postal Service to End Saturday Mail Delivery

Feb 6, 2013 8:28am                                               (Image Credit: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)Weekend mail delivery...

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New 17-million-digit monster is largest known prime

The largest known prime number has just shot up to 257,885,161 - 1, breaking a four-year dry spell in the search for new, ever-larger primes. Curtis Cooper at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg made the find as part of the Great Internet...

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Afghanistan's Karzai confirms to leave power in 2014

OSLO: Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai confirmed Tuesday in Oslo that he plans to step down next year when his mandate expires."The question of me staying as the president beyond 2014 is out of the question," Karzai said when reporters asked about recent speculation that he was keen to stay on."Neither am I seeking a third term, nor does the constitution allow it. There will be an election...

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Hidden 'radio' buttons discovered in Apple's iOS 6.1

There's a hint that Apple has something new in the pipeline, and the company appears to have tucked it away inside the latest version of its iOS software.Discovered last night within a freshly-jailbroken iPad, are a set of buttons and code references for "radio," a feature found in iTunes on Macs and PCs, but not on the iPad or iPhone. Making things more interesting is another button suggesting you...

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Space Pictures This Week: A Space Monkey, Printing a Moon Base

Illustration courtesy Foster and Partners/ESAThe European Space Agency (ESA) announced January 31 that it is looking into building a moon base (pictured in an artist's conception) using a technique called 3-D printing.It probably won't be as easy as whipping out a printer, hooking it to a computer, and pressing "print," but using lunar soils as the basis for actual building blocks could be a possibility."Terrestrial...

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Boy Rescued in Ala. Standoff 'Laughing, Joking'

The 5-year-old boy held hostage in a nearly week-long standoff in Alabama is in good spirits and apparently unharmed after being reunited with his family at a hospital, according to his family and law enforcement officials.The boy, identified only as Ethan, was rescued by the FBI Monday afternoon after they rushed the underground bunker where suspect Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, was...

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