Blog: The UK continues to show the way on intellectual property law.

Physicists have induced thousands of atoms trapped by laser beams to swap "spins" with partners simultaneously. The repeated exchanges, like a quantum version of swinging your partner in a square dance but lasting a total of just 10 milliseconds, might someday carry out logic operations in quantum computers, which theoretically could quickly solve certain problems that today's best supercomputers could not solve in years.

Kids asked to physically gesture at math problems are nearly three times more likely than non-gesturers to remember what they've learned. Scientists suggest it's possible to help children learn difficult concepts by providing gestures as an additional and potent avenue for taking in information.

The capacity to resist peer pressure in early adolescence may depend on the strength of connections between certain areas of the brain, according to a new study. Findings indicate that brain regions which regulate different aspects of behaviour are more interconnected in children with high resistance to peer influence.

Following last week's news of a proposal in Malaysia to force bloggers to register with the government, it appears that common sense has won out. There were clearly some politicians who recognized registering bloggers wasn't a very good idea (and was merely a kneejerk reaction to some trouble some politicians had had with critical bloggers). So it's good to see that those politicians effectively got that point across and the plan to force bloggers to register has been rejected. The government still warned bloggers not to publish "rumors" or "offensive remarks" because existing laws will be used against them -- but said that forcing them to actually register was unlikely to be an effective tool.