Chen's research, if proved by further experiments, could cast light on some of the biggest mysteries in finance.

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Many recipients of government research funding simply used the money to conduct their experiments and move on, but some, like Wu, saw the cash as the kernel of a business.

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"I don't see it as a compromise, but as a transitional step" to a "full blown" policy of federally financing embryonic stem cell research, Doerflinger said, adding that if researchers found the experiments on the small number of cell lines promising, they would want to create even more cell lines, and that would create pressure to allow tax dollars to be used for more experiments.

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Work on the project is so far confined to a research paper stemming from experiments with an iPhone, although it's easy to see this spreading to other platforms and real products before too long.

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Scientists and even some anti-abortion rights Republicans are urging the president to finance experiments on stem cells from human embryos, charging the research could lead to revolutionary treatments for diseases such as Parkinson's, diabetes and some forms of cancer.

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In addition to testing the system to detect fingerprints, the research team did a series of experiments in which they tested the same fingerprint on the same surface every day for 14 days.

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Miguel Nicolelis, a pioneer of research into brain-computer interfaces at Duke University in North Carolina, worked on the experiments with scientists at the Safra International Institute for Neuroscience of Natal in his native Brazil.

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