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E. coli bacteria is the primary cause of food poisoning. We may be able to get even for all those stomach aches we’ve had by turning it into automobile and jet fuel. The biotech company Joule Unlimited, which is privately held and highly secretive about its work, has been granted a patent for "a proprietary organism," which turns tout o be an adaptation of the E. coli bacteria that feeds only on carbon dioxide and gives off liquid hydrocarbons that can be turned into diesel fuel, jet fuel and gasoline.read more

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We’ve talked about the kind of language your computer uses, but what about the words that humans use? Google has created a huge database, consisting of 500 billion words, using over five million digitized books that are available to the public for free downloads, enabling scholars to see how words are used in relation to other words. It gives us a year-by-year count of how often various words appear, opening a window into how we think and act.
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Summer is hurricane season, which seems far away right now. But it never hurts to be prepared, because hurricanes do more than devastate the landscape–they’re bad for pregnant women and their unborn children as well. Exposure to hurricanes can cause significant adverse fetal distress risks and can lead to longer-term health care problems for affected children. These risks contribute previously hidden human and economic costs to the impacts of severe hurricanes.
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