ZuchinniOne writes "With Ubisoft's fantastically awful new DRM you must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy. Not only was this DRM broken the very first day it was released, but now their authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM."

The Telegraph is reporting that for the first time an extinct animal has been brought back via cloning. The Pyrenean ibex, a type of mountain goat, was declared officially extinct in 2000, but thanks to preserved skin samples scientists were able to insert that DNA into eggs from domestic goats to clone a female Pyrenean ibex. While the goat didn't survive long due to lung defects this gives scientists hopes that it will be possible to resurrect extinct species from frozen tissue. "Using techniques similar to those used to clone Dolly the sheep, known as nuclear transfer, the researchers were able to transplant DNA from the tissue into eggs taken from domestic goats to create 439 embryos, of which 57 were implanted into surrogate females. Just seven of the embryos resulted in pregnancies and only one of the goats finally gave birth to a female bucardo, which died seven minutes later due to breathing difficulties, perhaps due to flaws in the DNA used to create the clone."

A team at Northwestern University, led by Dean Ho, has discovered that nanodiamonds are a wound's best friend. Insulin is very attracted to nanodiamonds and in addition to regulating blood sugar, insulin can accelerate the healing process and stave off infection in wound sites. Since the tiny diamond can be easily placed in a wound without causing further damage, this is an excellent way to get an increased amount of insulin there as well. From the article, "A substantial amount of insulin can be loaded onto the nanodiamonds, which have a high surface area. The nanodiamond-insulin clusters, by releasing insulin in alkaline wound areas, could accelerate the healing process and decrease the incidence of infection. Ho says this ability to release therapeutics from the nanodiamonds on demand represents an exciting strategy towards enhancing the specificity of wound treatment."

An anonymous reader tips news that Micro Focus is in the process of buying Borland Software for $75 million. They also picked up Compuware's application testing and automated software quality business. Quoting ZDNet: "The boards of both companies agreed to the deal, which is expected to complete around mid-2009. ... In 2008, Texas-based Borland made a pre-tax loss of $204m, almost four times the size of the previous year's loss. It had revenues of $172m, part of a consistent downward trend since at least 2004. ... Borland was one of the oldest software companies in the PC software business, having been founded in 1981. Its most successful era was in the late 1980s via massive sales of Sidekick, a DOS-based terminate-and-stay-resident personal productivity application, and development tool Turbo Pascal, which challenged Microsoft's dominance in the application-development market."

An anonymous reader writes "I have been in a software engineering position at a large company for approximately seven years. Recently, for a variety of reasons, I accepted a new job working for a local software company. I have given my employer three weeks' notice, instead of the standard two, as a courtesy. In return, it has been implied that, in spite my record of above-average performance appraisals and promotions, I will be marked as leaving the company 'on bad terms' if I refuse to extend my departure date further. With only three weeks remaining, I am hesitant to rock the boat by contacting our HR department, but this concerns me and seems like an extremely unethical practice. I live in an 'at-will' employment state, so I know that they have no legal recourse to keep me. I am concerned about the references they could give in the future; having spent a large majority of my career at this company, I will be dependent on them for references to verify my career experience. Has anyone ever run into this kind of situation before?"

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Harvard University have developed a microfluidic device using ordinary paper and tape. Squares of paper are layered and connected with adhesive tape, channeling liquid horizontally and vertically in a very small area. Each square of paper has been treated with photoresist material, which creates channels that funnel liquid into tiny wells containing certain proteins or antibodies. The fluid interacts with that area of the paper and turns the well a certain color. It can, for example, detect varying concentrations of glucose. Lead researcher George Whitesides says such paper 'lab on a chip' tests may lead to a cost-effective, portable, and accurate method for diagnosing diseases in countries lacking reliable health care. The research appears in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science."

As hard as it is to imagine, coondoggie writes with news that the federal government just unveiled a new energy bill that will offer $15 million in assistance to retailers who help to build and adopt energy-efficient technologies. "The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced the first phase of $15 million awards to retailers Best Buy, JCPenney, John Deere, Macy's, SuperValu, Target, Toyota, and Whole Foods Market. Commercial Real Estate Firms such as CB Richard Ellis, Forest City Enterprises as well as the financials groups also saw some of the money. Along with the money the companies will have access to the DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to design, build, tune and operate at least one new prototype building and to retrofit an existing building project."