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March 8, 2013 Neurosurgeons are testing whether electrodes implanted deep inside a patient's brain could help treat chronic anorexia. Doctors are searching for something to help in these hard cases, and a small experiment, with just a half-dozen women, is drawing attention.

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March 8, 2013 Girdles and hormone therapy for grapes? California farmers go to great lengths to plump and firm up grapes as much as possible. But don't worry: None of these techniques hurts the grapes or those who love them.

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March 8, 2013 Gazing up at the night sky is simultaneously humbling and utterly thrilling. This hour, we'll hear from TED speakers who share an infectious sense of wonder and curiosity about our place in the universe and what lies beyond our skies.

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March 8, 2013 It's already happened. We humans have already met an intelligent alien. Not only that, we almost certainly had sex with them. And we did here, right here on Earth, not so many generations ago.

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March 8, 2013 Dianna Hanson was apparently surprised by the big cat as she was cleaning an enclosure and talking on her cellphone to a co-worker.

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March 8, 2013 In the past 100 years, average temperatures on Earth have changed by 1.3 degrees. Previously, that large of a swing took 5,000 years. That's the word from researchers who pored over temperature data going back to the end of the last ice age.

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March 7, 2013 Feeding on flowers with caffeinated nectars gives bees a memory boost, new research shows. Turns out, other studies have found humans can get a similar boost in short-term memory with caffeine — if they're exhausted.

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March 7, 2013 For more than a century, neurons have been the superstars of the brain. Now researchers say that when they placed human versions of another type of brain cell into mice brains, the mice grew up to be faster learners. This supports the hypothesis that these glial cells — and not just better-known neurons — play an important role in learning.

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March 7, 2013 The energy giant says it has "thrown in the towel on solar." The industry has evolved since BP entered the ring, currently emphasizing cheap production rather than research and development. BP says it just wasn't making money, though it will continue investing in other renewable resources.

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March 7, 2013 A rice enriched with beta-carotene promises to boost the health of poor children around the world. But critics say golden rice is also a clever PR move for a biotech industry driven by profits, not humanitarianism.

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March 6, 2013 Scientists are beginning to understand how people focus on a single voice in a crowded, noisy room. This ability, known as the "cocktail party effect," appears to rely on areas of the brain that have completely filtered out unwanted sounds.

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March 6, 2013 What happened to the future? In the '60s and '70s, says astrophysicist Neil Tyson, kids thought about going to space, exploring; tomorrow seemed so, so near. But no longer. Our world these days, is tighter, more awake to limits, and that's not good, says Tyson, not good for kids, and especially not good for the economy. Tyson insists that dreaming makes us richer.

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March 6, 2013 Forest elephants in central Africa are being slaughtered in record numbers for their ivory tusks, a decade-long study finds. The U.S. government and wildlife advocacy groups are struggling to slow the killings as poaching is overcoming laws and treaties intended to protect the species.

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