You won't feel comfortable or fashionable walking around with Max Donelan's invention strapped to your knee. The bulky 3.5-lb. (1.6 kg) gadget "is not that pleasant," says Arthur Kuo, a biomedical engineer at the University of Michigan, who co-wrote an article on the brace that appeared in Science last month. But Donelan's device pays off in other ways. Using the same principles that allow hybrid cars to recycle energy created in braking, braces worn on both knees can generate 5 watts...

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Worried that your Mac or PC won't know it's leap year? No need to panic. Check the calendar on your computer. There it is: February 29, 2008 ...

It was the ancient Egyptians who first figured out that the solar year and the man-made calendar year didn't always match up.

That's because it actually takes the Earth a little longer than a year to travel around the Sun — 365...

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You think you know climate change. You've seen An Inconvenient Truth. You've noticed the changing and warming weather patterns in your part of the world. You're beginning to suffer from acute ecoanxiety. But to really see global warming in action, you'd need to travel to the Arctic, where climate change is already kicking into high gear. Temperatures are increasing faster in the far north than they are in...

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(CHICAGO) — A new study gives the strongest evidence yet that obesity surgery can cure diabetes. Patients who had surgery to reduce the size of their stomachs were five times more likely to see their diabetes disappear over the next two years than were patients who had standard diabetes care, according to Australian researchers.

Most of the surgery patients were able to stop taking diabetes drugs and achieve normal blood tests.

"It's the best therapy for diabetes...

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Calm as the horizon, lying flat on his stretcher with his stolid wife and 50-year-old son in chairs beside him, Nick was down. About an hour earlier he had bent over to put on his socks and his leg had collapsed. So his wife and son dragged him to the car, and here he was in my hospital.


A doctor views an X-ray of a hip replacement.

Five weeks ago, the stocky old Greek, whose exuberant...

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