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Students' Experiments to Play Out in Space

Science experiments devised by teenage students, one from Egypt and two from the United States, will be conducted in space as part of a move by YouTube and Lenovo to inspire young minds.

Winners of a global YouTube Space Lab competition were announced Thursday, with 18-year-old Amr Mohamed of Egypt taking the honor for older students while Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma was deemed top submission in a younger group.

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Study Shows New Device Invisible to Magnetic Fields

European researchers said Thursday they have created a device invisible to a static magnetic field that could have practical military and medical applications.

Fedor Gomory and colleagues in Slovakia and Spain designed a cloak for a direct current, or dc, magnetic field that is static and produced by a permanent magnet or coil carrying a direct current.

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Hungarian Wins Top Mathematics Prize

Hungarian Endre Szemeredi has won the Abel prize, considered to be the "Nobel" for mathematics, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced on Wednesday.

Szemeredi, 71, who works both at the Hungarian Alfred Renyi Institute of Mathematics and at the US Rutgers university's department of computer sciences, was awarded the prize for his work in so-called discrete mathematics, the study of mathematical structures.

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6.7-Magnitude Quake Strikes Papua New Guinea

A 6.7-magnitude earthquake struck Papua New Guinea Thursday, the US Geological Survey reported, but seismologists said while it was widely felt it was too deep to cause much damage.

The quake hit some 62 kilometers (39 miles) from the Eastern Highlands provincial capital Goroka and 324 kilometers from the national capital Port Moresby at a depth of 105 kilometres.

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NASA's Dawn Craft Captures New Images of Asteroid

Scientists analyzing the surface of a giant asteroid are puzzling over bright spots that represent some of the purest materials seen so far by a NASA spacecraft.

NASA on Wednesday released new images of the asteroid Vesta taken by the orbiting Dawn spacecraft that show some places on the surface twice as bright as others.

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Illegal Toxic Waste Dump Sparks Anger in Russia

Russian authorities said Wednesday they planned to start cleaning up toxic waste that was illegally dumped near a town after outraged residents appealed to the Kremlin.

A chemical company dumped 163 tons of carbon tetrachloride in an abandoned asphalt plant near the small town of Balezino in the Udmurtia region of central Russia.

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Spongebob Beware: 'Robojelly' Eyes The Oceans

Scientists are developing a robotic jellyfish which uses the limitless energy of sea water to power its movement, according to US Navy-backed research published on Wednesday.

"Robojelly" mimicks the action of the jellyfish, which uses a circular muscle to open out a bell-like body and then sharply close it, which expels water and moves the creature forward.

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Mexico's Pacific Coast No Stranger to Earthquakes

A powerful earthquake Tuesday that centered along the Pacific coast of southern Mexico occurred in a region with a history of unleashing damaging jolts, scientists say.

Since 1973, the seismically active coast has been rocked by 15 major quakes magnitude-7 or larger. The deadliest occurred in 1985 when a magnitude-8 struck, sending shock waves to Mexico City that killed thousands.

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Branson Says Kutcher is Space Line's 500th Client

British billionaire Richard Branson said Monday his venture to launch paying tourists into space has netted its 500th customer, and it's none other than Ashton Kutcher.

Branson made the announcement on his blog, saying he gave the actor a quick call to congratulate him.

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Climate Change Damage to Oceans to Cost $2 Trillion

Greenhouse gases are likely to result in annual costs of nearly $2 trillion in damage to the oceans by 2100, according to a new Swedish study

The estimate by the Stockholm Environment Institute is based on the assumption that climate-altering carbon emissions continue their upward spiral without a pause.

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