A German scientist has developed one of the first translation programs suitable for everyday use. Sheer computing power gives the Google software surprisingly good results — perhaps the best yet seen created by a machine. It’s a good sign when the creator of a piece of software ends up using it. On a recent trip to Japan, Franz Och, who doesn’t speak Japanese, was able to decipher restaurant menus and even read local news...
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The nuclear energy industry hopes to secure its future through miniature nuclear reactors. The small underground plants will supposedly be safer than large plants, and would lower the cost of electricity from nuclear power. But critics say that the electricity the plants produce will be too expensive and warn of the risk of proliferation. In Galena, a town in icy central Alaska, energy is indispensable — but expensive. Although diesel generators provide plenty of...
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Last week, Google announced it would withdraw its Chinese operations from Beijing and instead serve the market from freer Hong Kong. The Internet giant’s co-founder, Sergey Brin, 36, discusses his company’s troubles in China and its controversial decision to pull up stakes and leave. SPIEGEL: With your decision to close Google’s Chinese Web site, you are the first major company to have challenged the government in Beijing in this way. Are you powerful enough...
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California has named the remains of the Apollo 11 mission a state historical resource — to the delight of the young profession of space archaeologists. They fear that the trash and equipment left behind by the United States’ journeys to the moon could someday wind up for sale on eBay if they aren’t protected. There is an unwritten law in America’s national parks: Carry out what you bring in. When they visited the moon,...
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Toyota has recalled millions of vehicles due to reports of sticking gas pedals and unintended acceleration. But finding out exactly what causes the problem has proven difficult. An explanation for why most of the accidents have occurred in the US has likewise proven elusive. It is an agonizing predicament that Toyota finds itself in — the most excruciating in the company’s history. Vehicles accelerating on their own continue to cause problems, and the inability...
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A modern-day Stone Age subculture is developing in the United States, where wannabe cavemen mimic their distant ancestors. They eat lots of meat, bathe in icy water and run around barefoot. Some researchers say people led healthier lives in pre-historic times. John Durant greets the hunter-gatherers of New York once a month in his apartment on the Upper East Side. They eat homemade beef jerky, huddle around the hearth and swap recipes for carpaccio...
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If you are a male duck-billed platypus, all that matters is what the other guys do. Strategies to handle the competition are far more variable then previously thought. In a new paper in the Journal of Mammalogy, Philip Bethge and colleagues from the University of Tasmanias’ Department of Zoology report, that duck-billed platypuses use a variety of measures to avoid encounters with their peers, including the complex behavior of temporarily following the lunar cycle....
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