And such a machine could be pitted against a human opponent, giving a clear measure of the machine's ability in this kind of reasoning.

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The PlayStation was technologically impressive, with its ability to splash over 300, 000 polygons on a television screen in a single second. (Nearly all videogame graphics are composed of polygons so "polygons per second" is a rough and ready measure of a machine's power.) Perhaps more important, Sony carefully forged and nurtured good relationships with third-party software developers, ensuring a steady supply of great games for its system.

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Given that those molecules are absorbed at different wavelengths, the machine can measure the amount of absorption and calculate the concentration of greenhouse gases in parts per million.

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Dr. Nakamura brushes aside charges of fraud, and says he has used the QRS machine to correctly measure the severity of radiation exposure in a group of Fukushima Daiichi workers.

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In May 2005, when he was stepping down as chairman of Intel, Grove asked Eric Dishman, the head of research at what would later become Intel's digital health division, if he could develop a machine that would objectively measure whether a patient was getting worse.

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Why is Schwab rebuilding what is, by any measure, one heck of a profit machine?

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The company is also pushing another measure, called read length, which is the length of DNA that the machine can read at a stretch.

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Founded in 1954 by the son of a traveling X-ray machine installer, the Glenwood, Ill. company makes tools called dosimeters, which measure and monitor radiation exposure.

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