Wired Science's Top Image Galleries of the Year

Many of our most popular posts are image galleries, and this year our readers favorite collections included microscope photos, doomsday scenarios, auroras and lots of images of Earth from space.The satellite image above of Brasilia is part of the most popular post of the year.Above: I think it's safe to say that our readers like looking at images of Earth from space almost as much as we do. Satellite...

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‘The Hobbit’ stays atop box office for third week

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” continues to rule them all at the box office, staying on top for a third-straight week with nearly $ 33 million.The Warner Bros. fantasy epic from director Peter Jackson, based on the J.R.R. Tolkien novel, has made $ 222.7 million domestically alone.Two big holiday movies — and potential awards contenders — also had strong openings. Quentin Tarantino‘s...

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Well: Exercise and the Ever-Smarter Human Brain

Anyone whose resolve to exercise in 2013 is a bit shaky might want to consider an emerging scientific view of human evolution. It suggests that we are clever today in part because a million years ago, we could outrun and outwalk most other mammals over long distances. Our brains were shaped and sharpened by movement, the idea goes, and we continue to require regular physical activity in order for...

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Negotiations Break Down on Debt Agreement

Pete Souza/The White House, via NBCPresident Obama spoke with David Gregory of NBC's "Meet The Press" in the Blue Room of the White House during an interview taped on Saturday. WASHINGTON — Negotiations over a last-ditch agreement to head off large tax increases and sweeping spending cuts in the new year appeared to resume Sunday afternoon after Republican senators withdrew their demand that a deal...

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Some Arctic seals now officially listed as threatened with extinction

First came the polar bear. Now, the federal government has added two other marine mammals to the list of creatures threatened...

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Facebook Shares Fall Briefly Amid Report of Instagram Quitters

The fallout from Instagram’s terms of service change that wasn’t actually changed continued Friday. Facebook, which owns the popular social media app, saw its stock price fall 3 percent amid a report that the TOS flap cost Instagram 25 percent of its users.Whether that number is accurate — Instagram insists it isn’t — was almost beside the point as Facebook saw shares fall to $25.22 before...

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Matt Damon tackles “fracking” issue in the “Promised Land”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The hot-button topic of “fracking” has finally made its way to Hollywood in the new movie “Promised Land,” out in U.S. theaters on Friday, with actors Matt Damon and John Krasinski teaming up to further the debate on the energy drilling technique.The film explores the social impact of hydraulic fracturing drilling technique, or “fracking,” which has sparked nation-wide environmental...

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Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center

Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesSenator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center. NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients. While the medical center had been treating...

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USC football: Matt Barkley will not play in Sun Bowl

Matt Barkley winces in pain after being sacked during USC's loss to UCLA. ...

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No One Uses Smart TV Internet Because It Sucks

People aren’t using their internet-connected smart TVs for anything beyond, well, watching TV. It turns out, nobody wants to tweet from their TV. Or read books. Or do whatever it is people do on LinkedIn. Worse, more than 40 percent of the people who buy a connected TV aren’t even using it for its ostensible primary purpose: getting online video onto the biggest screen in your home. What gives?We...

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