Citing an "alarming" lack of preparedness for terrorist attacks or other incidents involving release of cyanide, researchers in Minnesota are announcing development of potential new antidotes for the deadly poison that can be taken by mouth rather than injection.

People suffering from chronic mental or physical disabilities should not resort to a dolphin "healing" experience, warn two researchers. The scientists have launched an educational campaign countering claims made by purveyors of what is known as dolphin-assisted therapy. While swimming with dolphins may be a fun, novel experience, no scientific evidence exists for any long-term benefit from 'dolphin-assisted therapy.'

Deploying the hospital's "rapid response teams" proactively at the first inkling of trouble in hospitalized children can save lives, according to new research. The finding is the first to reveal lower death rates and cardiopulmonary arrest rates resulting from rapid response teams in a pediatric setting and could spark similar programs in children's hospitals around the country.

High school football season is just days away. About one million kids will suit up -- and by the end of football season, there will be a half million injuries. A recent study finds that in high school, those injuries are more likely to be serious -- concussions, broken bones. A pediatric expert explains why and tells parents and coaches how they can protect these young players.

TransGaming's Cider technology is being used to make pirated PC games playable on the Mac.

IT managers are saying "not so fast" as they move toward the OS, despite Microsoft's optimism about quick adoption.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Poor Vista, you really can't buy a break. First you've got legions of users angrily awaiting a decent update for a whole slew of problems, then there's the CEOs taking pot-shots at you, and now, Lenovo, supplier of the 2008 Olympic Games' computer systems says it's sticking with XP. Word on the street is that all vital computing tasks for the Games will be handled on XP-enabled PCs, while some internet lounges used by athletes will be equipped with Vista systems. According to Yang Yuanqing, chairman of Lenovo, "the Olympic Games require mature, stable technologies and it's not a place to try new technologies." Yang, we're pretty sure a legion of Vista users feel similarly about their desktops. You can almost hear Microsoft's sharp intake of breath from here.

[Via Slashdot]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Researchers discovered that rats most likely to self-administer addictive drugs had a particular receptor in the brain that is more responsive than the same receptor in rats least likely to self-administer addictive drugs. This receptor, known as the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, increases excitability within in the brain's reward centers. In the animals that were more likely to take addictive drugs, the effects of these receptors were much stronger, leading to more profound excitation of the cells and pathways associated with reward.

Preschoolers are aware of their own thought processes, psychologists demonstrate. They taught 3- and 4-year-olds to communicate their awareness of their thought processes using pictures rather than words. Scientists have previously demonstrated that dolphins, monkeys and even rats can engage in some form of "metacognition," or an awareness of their own thought processes. But developmental psychologists had previously assumed that human children did not develop this capability before about age 5.

A mysterious epidemic of thyroid disease among pet cats in the United States may be linked to exposure to dust shed from flame retardants in household carpeting, furniture, fabrics and pet food, scientists are reporting. They report evidence linking the disease to exposure to environmental contaminants called polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), which the researchers found to be elevated in blood samples of hyperthyroid cats.

Female hyenas avoid inbreeding with their male relatives by giving them little choice but to leave their birth group. Animals generally avoid inbreeding because it is genetically hazardous. They can either do this by moving away from home or, like humans, by learning who their relatives are and not mating with them.

Researchers have found that a key gene is often "silenced" in clear cell renal cell carcinoma, the most common type of kidney cancer, and when they restored that gene in human kidney cancer cells in culture and animal experiments, tumors stopped growing and many disappeared.