Like TiVo before it, the cable-box digital video recorder (DVR) is a gadget that’s easy to love—until you realize that last week’s game has been erased to make room for Desperate Housewives in high-definition. Fortunately, you can easily double or even triple your DVR’s capacity by adding more hard-drive space. Be aware that since you don’t own the box, the cable company can fine you for messing with it. That said, if you have a Scientific-Atlanta 8300—by far the most common cable DVR—with the correct operating system, you can swap the internal drive for a bigger one [see steps below]. Or take the safe route and just plug an external hard drive into the SATA port on the back of the box. A caveat: You have to leave the external drive on all the time, and its fan can get noisy. Of course, you can always just turn up the volume on that extra month’s worth of recorded games.

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Work on artificial arms that would be controlled by the human mind is ramping up thanks to a helping financial hand from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.DARPA announced in February that it would pour $55 million into a prosthetic arm research project to be led by Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. The work will be spread among more than two dozen institutions.

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Young adults in Iran tend to support martyrdom more when they are thinking about their own mortality.

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The shapes of letters in all languages are derived from common forms in nature, according to a new hypothesis.

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Scientists have recently identified two new species of frogs in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.The announcement comes on the heels of several recent discoveries that have showcased this Southeast Asian country as a treasure spot for wildlife.

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PHILADELPHIA (AP)—When Irv Shapiro found out he needed surgery to fix a ruptured heart valve, one of the first questions he asked his doctor was whether he should donate his own blood.He hoped to avoid being transfused with someone else’s blood, but wasn’t thrilled with the idea of spending weeks before surgery having pints of his own blood drawn and put in storage. So when he found out that Pennsylvania Hospital offered a third option—once only available to Jehovah’s Witnesses—it was a relief.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) – “Mission Impossible III” director J.J. Abrams is going from Cruise control to warp speed.

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A new study finds that the supermassive black holes at the hearts of some galaxies are the most fuel efficient engines in the universe.

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As companies with Internet mapping portals such as Yahoo and Google struggle to one-up each other with newer features and easier navigation, satellite imagery companies are taking advantage of that competition and finally seeing a commercial market for their products.

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Doomsayers and Chicken Little-types can now strike “deathray from a star” from their list of possible ways to die.

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