Roland Piquepaille writes "Chemists from Virginia and California have cooked a soup of fullerenes which produced an improbable buckyegg. The egg-shaped structure of their 'buckyballs' was a complete surprise for the researchers. In fact, they wanted to trap some atoms of terbium in a buckyball "to make compounds that could be both medically useful and well-tolerated in the body." And they obtained a buckyegg which both violates some chemistry laws and the FIFA soccer laws which were used until the last World Cup. Read more for additional references and a picture of this buckyegg carrying metal molecules."

Roland Piquepaille writes "MIT researchers have successfully integrated data mining tools and modern methods of quantum mechanics. They've designed software which can help predict the crystal structures of materials. To simplify, they say they've used methods used by online sales sites to suggest books to customers. And it seems to work: they claim they can determine in days the properties of atomic structures that might have taken months before. Read more for additional references and pictures."

Alien54 writes "The first official studio auction of memorabilia from all five 'Star Trek' television series and 10 movie spinoffs, to be held from October 5 to 7 in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the original 'Star Trek' series, was announced by Christie's on Thursday. CBS Paramount Television Studios is cleaning out its vaults for the sale, comprising more than 1,000 lots totaling some 4,000 items. Items to hit the block include props, weapons, prosthetics and set dressings unearthed from five Paramount warehouses, as well as many special and spectacular items highlighted in the various shows." Update: 05/21/2006 14:57 GMT by SM Several users have provided us with the direct link to the auction site for easy viewing.

An anonymous reader writes "According to New Scientist, Philips has filed a patent for technology to force viewers to watch the ads in a program. Basically they plan to add extra flags to the Multimedia Home Platform that would stop controls from working until the ads are finished." From the article: "Philips' patent acknowledges that this may be 'greatly resented by viewers' who could initially think their equipment has gone wrong. So it suggests the new system could throw up a warning on screen when it is enforcing advert viewing. The patent also suggests that the system could offer viewers the chance to pay a fee interactively to go back to skipping adverts."

Brian Puccio writes "Possibly as a result of their recent purchase by Chinese national interests, Robert Scoble, (in)famous Microsoft blogger and evangelist, has decided to go work for Google: 'I just got off the phone with Larry Page. He's offered me a job to run Google's PR department and I've decided to take him up on it. Why? Because I finally realized that Steve Gillmor is right. Microsoft Office is dead and I wanted to be at the company that is the future of everything... My first project will be to convert the Scoble Dashboard over to a Linux box.'"

nick125 writes "I've put together a quick guide on making a OMG PONIES!! sign. The howto has 9 simple steps, which, you will get a OMG PONIES!! sign at the end. The howto (pictures included!) is here."

Buttons98 writes "Yeah sushi is TOTALLY GROSS but I found USB SUSHI DRIVES!!! that are memory storage sticks that I can use to store pictures of ponies and kittens and unicorns and all my short OC fan fiction (ryan is SOOOOOOO CUTE LOL!!!) The BEST part is that the drives are available in 32MB, 128MB :) :) :) and are shaped like little SUSHIS!!"

.yosh, who's totally cool I know him textd me to say that Wizards of the Coast is totally making a My Little Pony Roleplaying Game!! OMG! Now I don't have to play with that stupid dungeons and dragons book with all the impossibly clothed women characters. Ponies 4EVA! From the site: "If it's on Butterfly Island, it's in the My Little Pony RPG core rulebook, and we expect the book to be an invaluable tool for RPG fans and game developers alike,' said Jonathan Tweet, senior game designer with Wizards of the Coast. 'Not only will this RPG appeal to current fans of My Little Pony, but it will also help core roleplayers come to appreciate the depth and possibilities in this unique fantasy world. I know I did.'"

Fry-kun writes "The Register reports that a controlling amount of Google's Class B stock was purchased today a corporate entity owned by the Chinese Ministry of Information." From the article: "Amongst the assets acquired by the Chinese government is NASA's Ames Research Center. Google announced a partnership with Ames last year, and, as it turns out, the move laid the groundwork for the takeover by the PRC. The Chinese will gain control of the world's largest wind tunnels - devices that when opened up could be used to push the smell of Mu Shu Pork across much of Silicon Valley, or conversely be used to spread avian bird flu, or mind-altering substances."

Daniel writes "Developers have created a new Rails framework for SQL, SQL on Rails. Check out the screen cast that shows you how to develop an internet search engine with three lines of code. Version 4.1 of the SQL on Rails framework is available for download on the site, and the O'Reilly title is expected to hit shelves next month." ZOMG L@@K at the kitten site it powers!@#!11

Aranth writes "The staff at Ars Technica has gotten its hands on a demo of Duke Nukem Forever, and has written up a review. It seems the game is near ready for release! As the article explains, the reason it has taken so long to develop is because this is the first real Web 3.0 application- it has 'been rewritten as an Ajax application written using the Ruby on Rails framework' and runs in any web browser, although some seem to have difficulties." Sadly, the game looks to be deficient in the area of ponies. :(((( But, it's playable from my hiptop!! :))))

Micahel West writes "As reported on OpenOffice.org: 'For an undisclosed sum but reputed to be in the billions, Microsoft's Bill Gates has personally bought the leading open-source desktop project. Saying he "was sick and tired of open-source eating away at his profits," the world's richest man decided to put an end to the nuisance and simply buy OpenOffice.org. It will form part of a growing list of Microsoft acquisitions including several erstwhile competitors, a considerable number of prominent politicians, and a few small governments.'"

Bananatree3 writes "A monkey has learned to control a remote arm to fling its own poo at researchers. From the article: " Researchers at Duke University have taught a lab monkey to control the movement of a robotic arm, using only signals from its brain. The monkey's immediate utilization of this new skill was to shower a group of neurobiologists with feces, according to the report by lead researcher Miguel Nicolelis.""

farker haiku writes "Those of you who haven't heard of the metasploit project, it's an open source product for performing security audits. This time they've managed to find a remote buffer overflow in OpenSSH. Ya'll might want to read the link and then do whatever updating is necessary." It's unfortunate that something like this gets released today since nobody will bother to patch.