Dianne Feinstein of California chided supporters for bringing up such a contentious measure in the heat of an election campaign that they know will not pass.

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Based on the Phoenix lander, the craft is tasked with giving us a peek beneath the planet's surface, armed with tools that include a geodetic instrument from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which will be used to calculate Mars' rotation axis, a seismic wave sensor and a subsurface heat probe, to measure the planet's internal temperature.

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Business leaders can now determine whether their brands are perceived as cool and how much emotional heat they have as a measure of future business success.

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The standard measure for such things is the Scoville Heat Unit, or SHU, named after Wilbur Lincoln Scoville, a chemist who in 1912 developed a method of assessing the heat given off by capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers.

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Wavering lawmakers also will feel the heat from the White House directly, colleagues who are backing the measure and from other lobbyists.

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Dr Pollack has worked out how to measure the earth's temperature several hundred years ago by studying the actual heat that once made it warm.

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