Science News

Facebook users in the American West appear to move around a lot, and often have friends throughout the country, while users from Minnesota to Manhattan have connections much closer to home.

These are just some of the interesting findings about Facebook users recently discovered by Pete Warden, a Colorado-based, British-born ex-Apple engineer who has spent the last six months gathering and analyzing data from more than 215 million public Facebook profile pages.

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NASA launched a science satellite on Thursday to keep a close watch on the sun and help improve forecasts of the solar storms that can disrupt navigational signals, satellites and power grids.

The alliance is a joint venture between Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp.

The Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, lifted off aboard an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket, made by United Launch Alliance, at 10:23 a.

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A fire station in Maryland has been largely destroyed by a three-alarm blaze after snow from the region’s double blizzards collapsed the roof.

Carroll County spokeswoman Vivian Laxton says the roof of the station’s banquet hall caved in around 7:40 a.m. Thursday, rupturing a gas line and sparking the blaze.

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Russian environmental groups on Thursday warned that the reopening of a paper mill on the edge of Siberias Lake Baikal posed a danger of pollution to one of the worlds largest freshwater reserves.

WWF Russia representative Evgueni Schwartz told reporters, “It is very dangerous because they are going to resume the production of white cellulose with chlorine,” which is a toxic gas.

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While the debate over climate change rages on, energy-efficient features have become a key attraction for todays home buyers. The National Association of Realtors 2009 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers found that nearly 90 percent of buyers considered heating and cooling bills important, and more than 70 percent wanted high-efficiency appliances.

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The spiraling crisis at Toyota Motor Corp deepened on Tuesday as the automaker said it would recall thousands of Camry sedans as well as nearly half a million new Prius and other hybrid cars to fix steering and braking problems.

News of the recalls, the latest in a string of embarrassing Toyota product problems that have affected more than 8.

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Imagine water freezing solid even as its heating up. Such are the bizarre tricks scientists now find water is capable of.

Now researcher Igor Lubomirsky at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and his colleagues have discovered another way to control the freezing point of water - via what are called quasi-amorphous pyroelectric thin films.

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The leader of a U.N. program to protect endangered species says Zimbabwean security forces are spearheading the poaching of elephants and rhinos in the troubled country.

Zimbabwe’s minister of Environment and Natural Resources Management, Francis Nhema, says he has been briefed by police about security forces being involved in poaching.

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An Atlas V rocket carrying a US solar observatory blasted off into space Thursday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The NASA Solar Dynamic Observatory being boosted into space will give scientists the most detailed look ever at the surface of our sun and its complicated workings during a five year mission.

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A new NASA spacecraft aimed at studying the inner workings of our sun blasted off Thursday to begin a five-year mission to better understand the mysteries of Earths star.

The $850 million mission will take the most detailed, comprehensive measurements yet of our closest star - with 10 times better resolution than HD television - using three state-of-the-art instruments onboard.

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