Ruling Halts Federal Funding of Embryonic-Stem-Cell Research

A year and a half after President Obama loosened restrictions on government funding of human-embryonic-stem-cell research, a federal judge on Monday, Aug. 23, declared all such studies temporarily off-limits for taxpayer dollars, on the grounds that they violate a 1996 law.

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Interview with IBM’s Watson Handler David Ferrucci

Why aren’t you letting Watson speak for himself today?Watson is trained to answer questions for Jeopardy! It’s not an interactive dialogue system, so it can’t conduct its own interviews. You can imagine giving it information so it could answer [impromptu] questions, but it would still be responding only from content it’s been given and analyzed

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Infectious Diseases: Flu & Paraflu

The symptoms seemed to extend from coast to coast—sore throat, a cough, runny nose, varying degrees of fever—and there were sensationalized press reports of a “deadly threat to the elderly'' and a “nationwide epidemic.” Thousands of Americans, mostly in the Eastern states, were down last week with something loosely described as flu. The U.S

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Is Gene-Therapy Medical Treatment Ready for Prime Time?

At first it sounded like science fiction, curing genetic diseases by giving people new genes. Then it seemed like simple fiction: while theoretically possible, gene therapy appeared unlikely to become a true therapeutic option, the field having suffered years of complications and high-profile setbacks.

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High court to decide if war memorial violates Constitution

Driving along a pockmarked road amid rocks and Joshua trees in a lonely southern California desert, religious controversy might be the last thing you’d expect to encounter. And if you don’t look too closely, you’re likely to zip right past the focus of a hotly contested Supreme Court battle.

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