Dungeons & Dragons proves more compelling than raising their children, and now a Reno, Nevada couple is facing some serious prison time.

Air cooled by ice is just as efficient -- and more environmentally friendly -- than traditional air-conditioning systems. It's also taking pressure of the city's power grid.

Years in the planning, one of the world's most powerful telescopes sees its first light over the weekend. It should be fully operational by next May.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We've seen nanotechnology used to improve on traditional batteries before, but NASA now seems to be taking a slightly different tact, developing an actual "nanobattery" to provide power to other nanoscale devices. According to a recent patent application, its idea is to make use of the iron-containing protein ferritin (seen at right), which apparently has the innate ability to carry either a positive or negative charge. In practice, one layer of ferritin would simply be stacked with another layer carrying the opposite charge, effectively forming a battery just a few nanometers thick. The capacity could then be further increased by adding more layers of ferritin, with the battery still remaining "stable and robust." What's more, NASA says the whole the whole process can be done quickly and easily -- relatively speaking, of course.

[Via NewScientist]

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

Wyneken belongs in the growing list of note-taking applications for GNOME, along with the Sticky Notes panel apps, Evolution, and Tomboy. Specifically designed for students' needs, it is equally well-suited to the random jottings that anyone might make during the course of their work, as well as letters, reports, presentations, and even man pages. Wyneken is built on LaTeX, so it allows for complex formatting when necessary, with the tradeoff of not having a WYSIWYG display.

Ion Audio has introduced two new vinyl record turntables that feature direct USB output.

Kingston's new DataTraveler 100 USB thumbdrive features a retracting USB connector aand a capless design.