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When we talked with element 112’s discoverer, Sigurd Hofmann, on the significance of making a permanent mark on the periodic table, he told us he wanted a moniker that recognized a famous scientist while avoiding the flag-waving nationalism normally associated with the process. Today, Hofmann and his team made their decision public.

Good bye element 112 and ununbium, its placeholder name. Hello “Copernicium.”

By choosing to honor the father of the heliocentric solar system, element 112 discovery team leader Sigurd Hofmann wanted to avoid the divisive names selected for past elements, salute an influential scientist who didn’t receive any accolades in his own lifetime, and highlight the link between astronomy and Hofmann’s own field of nuclear chemistry.

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Archaeologists from Berkshire, UK, have discovered evidence of an Iron Age town underneath the remains of a Roman settlement in north Hampshire, which they say could be Britain’s earliest Iron Age towns with a planned layout.

The discovery was made by the University of Reading’s Archaeology Department, which has been excavating at the Silchester Roman site, Calleva Atrebatum, since 1997.

A street-grid was found to have been in place before the Romans came in AD 43. Archaeologists have also discovered evidence of widespread burning at the site.

They believe this, along with other finds, suggests that the site could have been destroyed at the hands of queen Boudicca, who in AD 60/61 led a major uprising against the occupying Roman forces.

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One of the biggest glaciers in the southern hemisphere shrivelled by a fifth in 40 years.

The Cook glacier on Kerguelen, an island in France’s southern Indian Ocean territories, covered 501 square kilometres (193 square miles) in 1963.

Combining satellite images with other data, glaciologists from the Laboratory for Studying Geophysics and Space Oceanography estimate the glacier lost an average of nearly 1.5 metres (4.9 feet) in height each year by 2003, shedding almost 22 percent of its original volume.

In terms of area, the glacier shrank by 1.9 sq. kms. (0.74 sq. miles) per year from 1963 to 1991.

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Many of the primitive bodies wandering the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter are former comets, tossed out of orbit by a brutal ballet between the giant outer planets, say a team of astrophysicists.

A commonly accepted theory is that the asteroid belt is the rubble left over from a “proto-planetary disk,” the dense ring of gas that surrounds a new-born star.

But the orbiting rocks have long been a source of deep curiosity. They are remarkably varied, ranging from mixtures of ice and rock to igneous rocks, which implies they have jumbled origins.

The answer to the mystery, according to a study published by the British journal Nature , is that a “significant fraction” of the asteroid population in fact comprises ex-comets.

Famously described as “dirty snowballs” of ice and dust, comets are lonely, long-distance wanderers of the Solar System whose elliptical swing around the Sun can take decades.

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The process know as the greenhouse effect earns its description from a comparison between the temperature of air inside a greenhouse compared to the air outside. Known to many as global warming, its is one of the most frightening man made phenomena of the 21st century. At the end of 2006, scientists confirm that the average temperature of the planet has shown an increase of up to 1 C every year for the last five. This increase had proved beneficial for just a few regions in the World especially those of higher latitude.

However, the negative impacts of the greenhouse effect on the World’s climate change are being observed already through the overall effect in constant annual temperature increases.

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Planetary scientists have found the first solid evidence for a moderate-size black hole in a distant galaxy, backing up the idea that smaller black holes merge into huge ones.

A black hole is an object with such a powerful gravitational field that it absorbs all the light that passes near it and reflects nothing.

Until now, identified black holes have been either super-massive (several million to several billion times the mass of the Sun) in the centre of galaxies, or about the size of a typical star (between three and 20 Solar masses).

Now, an international team has discovered the black hole HLX-1, 290 million light years from Earth, which it is more than 500 times the mass of the Sun, using the European Space Agency’s telescope.

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Hybrid car is an automobile that uses a combination of at least two unlike fuel sources for its impulsion. Even though many combinations can be possible, normally when people are discussing about hybrid cars, they are referring to cars with the combination of either an electric motor, or a gasoline engine, or a battery that influences the electric motor and stores energy for future use.

Due to effective use of technology, hybrid cars develop much higher gas mileage than any other vehicle. In fact hybrid cars stands at the top spot for the most fuel economy car in their relevant categories; compact cars, two-seaters and mid size cars.

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The term Global warming refers to the gradual rise in the earth’s temperature. Global warming has been an environmental issue that has plagued the entire globe for a few years now and researchers have said that the global warming will cause a complete change on the planet, with the same catastrophic effects as the ice age. Small effects can be seen already in the North and South Poles, where the ice bergs are beginning to melt. There is also evidence of the sea levels rising in certain areas.

Global warming has been directly attributed to the hole in the ozone layer which is causing the heating up of the earth’s atmosphere from the sun. This is commonly referred to as the greenhouse effect. It is said that if the hole in the ozone layer continues to grow, global warming could accelerate quite dramatically. This is why many countries have come together and signed agreements to cut down on fuel emissions into the atmosphere and use various other forms of energy that are safe for the ozone layer.

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AORA, a leading Israeli solar energy technology company, launched world’s first hybrid solar thermal power station at Kibbutz Samar in southern Israel.

This marked the first time that concentrating solar power (CSP) stations can provide environmentally-friendly power 24 hours a day, according to AORA’s CEO, Haim Fried.

AORA’s “Power Flower” station, named due to its unique yellow tulip design, consists of a field of 30 tracking mirrors (heliostats) situated on half an acre of land.

Each of the station’s 30 heliostats tracks the sun and reflects its rays towards the top of a 30 meter-high tower housing a special solar receiver along with a 100 kilowatt gas turbine.

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