Taste test: Does hot cocoa taste better from an orange cup?

Guess which hot chocolate is most delicious?(Credit:Amanda Kooser/CNET)I've always heard that smell plays an important role in how food tastes. I didn't expect that color could also sway the taste buds. A study published in the Journal of Sensory Studies found that the color of a cup can influence the way people taste hot chocolate.Betina Piqueras-Fiszman, a researcher at the Polytechnic University...

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Scientists Seek Foolproof Signal to Predict Earthquakes

Twenty-three hundred years ago, hordes of mice, snakes, and insects fled the Greek city of Helike on the Gulf of Corinth (map). "After these creatures departed, an earthquake occurred in the night," wrote the ancient Roman writer Claudius Aelianus. "The city subsided; an immense wave flooded and Helike disappeared."Since then, generations of scientists and folklorists have used a dizzying...

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Obama Poised to Name New Defense, Treasury Chiefs

With the "fiscal cliff" crisis behind him, President Obama is poised to name two new key players to his cabinet, with at least one announcement expected early next week.The announcement of who will replace outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta could come as soon as Monday, sources told ABC News.Meanwhile, the president is also eyeing a replacement for outgoing Treasury Secretary...

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Unique meteorite hints Mars stayed moist for longer

A scorched rock bought in Morocco turned out to be a diamond in the rough. The unusual meteorite may be the first sample of the Red Planet's crust ever to hit Earth, and it suggests that Mars held on to its water for longer than we thought. ...

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New US Congress faces broader fiscal battles

WASHINGTON: The 113th US Congress, featuring dozens of new faces in the House and Senate, convened Thursday fresh from the year-end "fiscal cliff" fiasco, as lawmakers cast a wary eye towards the tough budget battles ahead.Twelve freshman senators and 82 newly-elected congressmen took the oath of office, with President Barack Obama's Democrats enjoying modest gains in both chambers.But...

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Watch CNET's The British Are Coming panel at CES

From left: Colin Crawford (Pure), Ian Drew (ARM) and Ambarish Mitra (Blippar) I am the Editor of CNET UK and I have been going to CES for over a decade now, but there's one country's tech that I almost never see reported on at the show -- my own. I've always wondered why that is. Brits have been involved in so many important tech inventions over the years, from television to the World Wide Web --...

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Pictures We Love: Best of December

Photograph by Paula Bronstein, Getty ImagesElephants are likely one of the last things jittery coffee junkies think about while waiting for their latest shot of caffeine.But these ponderous pachyderms are essential in the production of the latest brew from Black Ivory Coffee, a Thai company. The elephants, pictured above going for an early morning bath in northern Thailand on December 10, ingest Thai...

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Senate Panel Probes Bin Laden Movie Torture Scenes

The Senate Intelligence Committee has launched a new probe to determine how much the CIA may have influenced the portrayal of torture scenes shown in "Zero Dark Thirty," the Hollywood dramatization of the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden.The probe, as first reported by Reuters and confirmed to ABC News by a spokesperson for the committee's chairman, will attempt to answer two...

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Humble coin toss thrust to heart of multiverse debate

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Al Jazeera eyes Gore-founded TV group: report

WASHINGTON: The Qatar-owned media group Al Jazeera is in talks to buy Current TV, a struggling cable channel founded by former US vice president Al Gore, The New York Times reported Wednesday.The deal could allow Al Jazeera broader entry into US homes, by acquiring the cable group available in around 60 million American households, the report said.Contacted by AFP, Current Media did not...

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