Josh Fink writes "A group of Dutch Scientists have recently released a study stating that they have found that changes in Earth's orbit around the sun are linked to mammal extinctions. From the article: '"Extinctions in rodent species occur in pulses which are spaced by intervals controlled by astronomical variations and their effects on climate change..." The cycles are associated with lower temperatures, changes in precipitation, habitats, vegetation and food availability which are the main factors influencing the extinction peaks, the study published in the journal Nature said.' So on top of worrying about global warming, it seems we should also worry about the physics that govern the orbit of Earth around the sun. Too bad we don't have a way of keeping the Earth in the same orbit/on the same axis of rotation."

Roland Piquepaille writes "In "New vest offers wearer a portable hug," the Boston Globe reports that engineers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have designed a vest to help people suffering from autism or high anxiety. This inflatable vest has pockets that hold air bladders and is powered by 10 AA batteries. When you push a button, the vest squeezes — or hugs — you. Now the engineers also want to know if their vest is effective — apparently a premiere. So they're testing it with both students and psychatric patients. So far, it's just a prototype, but read more for additional details and a picture of this hugging vest."

DECS writes "The series of articles Why Apple Will Change TV compared how Apple is poised for success in areas where Microsoft is currently failing. But circumstances are subject to change! Just over a decade ago, Apple began facing serious legacy problems with its platform, with many parallels to today's Microsoft. Examining Apple's dramatic fall provides a series of notable platform lessons that no company should ignore. A look back at the forgotten failure of Apple's PowerTalk: Apple vs. Microsoft in the Enterprise"

lisah writes "Just two months after its last update, KDE has released a new maintenance and bugfix update. KDE 3.5.5 boasts over 1,200 changes including speed improvements to KHTML, an update of Kopete 0.12.3, support for Adium themes, and improved support for Yahoo! and Jabber IM protocols. KDE 3.5.5 also now offers extensive support for over 65 languages. Just a day after the release of 3.5.5, developers say they are already looking toward the release of KDE4, which will include improvements in multimedia, hardware integration, and more." (Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)

prostoalex writes "If your company uses 17" or 19" monitors, 30" monitors will make the employees more productive, Apple-sponsored research says. MacWorld reports: "Pfeiffer's testing showed time savings of 13.63 seconds when moving files between folders using the larger screen — 15.7 seconds compared to 29.3 seconds on the 17-in. monitor — for a productivity gain of 46.45 percent. The testing showed a 65.09 percent productivity gain when dragging and dropping between images — a task that took 6.4 seconds on the larger monitor compared to 18.3 seconds using the smaller screen. And cutting and pasting cells from Excel spreadsheets resulted in a 51.31 percent productivity gain — a task that took 20.7 seconds on the larger monitor versus 42.6 seconds on the smaller screen."" Calling such task-specific speed jolts "productivity gains" seems optimistic unless some measure of overall producivity backs up that claim, but don't mention that on the purchase order request.

lisah writes "With the announcement of Hans Reiser's arrest this week, many people have been wondering what this will mean for his company, Namesys, and the future of his filesystem work. According to a report at Linux.com, employees at Namesys are circling their wagons and plan to continue working on the project 'in the short term.' One employee admits, 'we are rather shaken and stressed at the moment, although I cannot say we didn't see it coming.'"

An anonymous reader writes "The government of Libya is reported to have agreed to provide its 1.2m school children with a cheap, durable laptop computer by June 2008. The laptops offer internet access and are powered by a wind-up crank. They cost $100 and manufacturing begins next year, says One Laptop per Child. The non-profit association's chairman, Nicholas Negroponte, said the deal was reached on Tuesday in Libya. Professor Negroponte told the New York Times in an email that the project mirrored Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's political agenda of creating a more open Libya and he also expressed interest in purchasing the computers for poorer African neighbors."

BrewerDude asks: "I've set up a blog about programming (URL withheld: this isn't about self-promotion). I'm currently using one of the popular blog hosting services, but find it lacking when it comes to handling source code snippets in posts. It's even worse when it comes to dealing with code snippets that people include in their comments. At this point I'm frustrated enough that I'm ready to move from that service to something else. Ideally, I'm looking for something that will handle syntax highlighting for a variety of languages and do this for both the posts and the comments. I'd prefer a hosted solution, but am not opposed to installing and maintaining my own instance of a blog application if necessary. What have you found to be the best blog application when it comes to supporting posts and comments that include source code?"

slidersv writes "Reuters is reporting discovery of radioactive snails in the area where three hydrogen bombs were lost by US in the 1966. The radioactive creatures crawl up from underground, where authorities suspect deposits of uranium and plutonium may be located."

knowhow writes "Tom Taylor took the risk of dropping out from high school just to play video games. The guy who is just 18 years old, was prompted to take this step; because of the reason that emerged from his love for gaming. After playing for six months on a full time basis the guy signed a contract for a staggering $250,000." From the Article:"Now Tom taylor is known as Tsquared on the gaming circuit. He's earning six figures and has product endorsements and a video game tutoring business. He's one of about 100 professional gamers associated with Major League Gaming, a video gaming league founded in 2002. When they're playing well, pros might bring home a few grand a month."

mikesd81 writes, "There's an article at the Associated Press about how the government must balance close oversight of the fast-growing field of nanotechnology against the risk of stifling new development. Contrasting view came from a panel of experts brought together to discuss how nanotechnology should be regulated. The article states that submicroscopic particles are being incorporated in the thousands of products overseen by the FDA, including drugs, foods, cosmetics and medical devices and the products consist of roughly 20% of each dollar spent by U.S. consumers. Matthew Jaffe of the U.S. Council of International Business says, "The key is to use science to weigh both the benefits and the risks of nanotechnology. That's a balance the FDA already seeks to strike in assessing other products." From the article: "'The success of nanotechnology will rely in large part on how FDA plays its regulatory role,' said Michael Taylor of the University of Maryland's School of Public Health. The FDA doesn't believe nanotechnology is inherently unsafe, but does acknowledge that materials at the nano scale can pose different safety issues than do things that are far larger. 'The FDA wants to learn of new and emerging science issues related to nanotechnology, especially in regard to safety,' said Randall Lutter, the agency's associate commissioner."

ZZeta writes "Even though the information on the site is still scarce, Editor & Publisher is already publishing the scoop: Apparently, Wikipedia has been unblocked in China. From the article: 'Wikipedia reported on its site that it had received word from multiple users in the country on Chinese-forums.com that the site had been restored.'"

Jabrwock writes "GamePolitics.com reports that a judge in Miami ruled that Take Two Interactive, makers of the controversial title Bully, must hand over a copy of the soon to be released game to the court within 24 hours. Jack Thompson, the plaintiff, called the ruling a 'huge victory against the violent video game industry', although Take Two can still appeal the order. Thompson filed a lawsuit asking the court to label Bully a 'public nuisance' and restrict its October 17 release in Florida."

Cr0w T. Trollbot writes "Today Transmeta filed suit against Intel for patent infringement. From the article: 'The suit [...] alleges that Intel infringed upon ten of Transmeta's patents. The patents cover computer architecture and power efficiency technologies.' Transmeta offered a low-power x86 processor until last year which used Transmeta's vaunted 'code morphing' software."

eldavojohn writes "A new patent filed by Apple is causing speculation that OSX is soon to receive a new feature. From the article: '[the patent states] that the user account may be stored alongside general data storage or "other functionality". All of which seems to suggest that at some time soon we may be able to load our user accounts onto an iPod, hard drive or USB keydrive and take them wherever we go.'"