Radio signals for the next generation of mobile phone services can cause headaches and nausea, according to a survey conducted by three Dutch ministries on the impact of tomorrow’s data networks on health.
The study, the first of its kind, tested the impact of radiation from base stations used for the current mobile telephone network, [...]

A constantly growing variety of electronic exchanges are putting increasing heat on the granddaddy of human pits, the NYSE
When former Citigroup (C ) Co-Chairman John Reed assumes the helm of the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 30, he’ll have plenty of fires to put out. Investors are screaming for reforms in the way [...]

An oil frequently found on your bathroom shelf may prove a viable alternative to diesel fuel for cars and trucks. Early tests show that jojoba-fuelled engines kick out fewer pollutants, run more quietly and for longer, and perform just as well as diesels. The search for alternative fuels, driven by dwindling oil reserves and concerns [...]

The slowdown of the brain with old age is due to the lack of a brain chemical which helps neurons to be selective about what they respond to, reveals research involving the world’s oldest monkeys. Higher brain functions, such as visual recognition or understanding language, require the processing of information in the brain but decline [...]

A computer memory chip based on carbon nanotubes has passed a manufacturing milestone, according to the US company developing the technology. The prototype chip would store information using hundreds of billions of nanotubes with a theoretical capacity of 10 gigabits of data, says Nantero, based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Claims of “unexpected and stunning new physical phenomena” are rare in the abstract of a reputable scientific paper. But the latest report by photonics crystal pioneer John Joannopoulos and his group at MIT, soon to be published in Physical Review Letters, does not disappoint.
The researchers document the ultimate control over light: a way to [...]

The newest staff member at The Johns Hopkins Hospital stands just over 5 feet and looks like an oversized vacuum cleaner with a video screen for a head. “DR. ROBOT” is part of a study at Hopkins that asks: If a patient’s own doctor isn’t physically available, would that patient rather see and talk with [...]

A widespread belief among physicists nowadays is that modern science requires squadrons of scientists and wildly expensive equipment.
Craig Wallace and Philo T. Farnsworth are putting the lie to all that.
Wallace, a baby-faced tennis player fresh out of Spanish Fork High School, had almost the entire physics faculty [...]

As a child in the early ’70s, alexander Sulakvelidze dreamed of rising to the top of the Soviet scientific establishment. Fascinated by life at the smallest scales, he earned his PhD in microbiology from Tbilisi State Medical University in his hometown, the capital of Soviet Georgia. By the time he was 27, he was deputy [...]

Physicists have created blobs of gaseous plasma that can grow, replicate and communicate – fulfilling most of the traditional requirements for biological cells. Without inherited material they cannot be described as alive, but the researchers believe these curious spheres may offer a radical new explanation for how life began.

Eight years ago, nanometer-sized features resembling bacteria were discovered in the Martian meteorite ALH84001. Although some scientists think nanometer-sized life can’t exist, others contend that nanobacteria are the new frontier in life science. A recent study published in the journal Geology suggests that the nanometer-sized structures are proof of life. Have we had the proof [...]

A devastating burst of gamma rays may have caused one of Earth’s worst mass extinctions, 443 million years ago. A team of Astrophysicists and palaeontologists says the pattern of trilobite extinctions at that time resembles the expected effects of a nearby gamma-ray burst (GRB). Although other experts have greeted the idea with some scepticism, [...]

In September 1813, a major hurricane destroyed US gunboats and ships that were defending St Mary’s, Georgia, from the British. Fifty sailors drowned.
In a letter to the US secretary of the navy, the commodore of the naval task force wrote that a privateer named Saucy Jack had been deposited so high on the marshes that [...]

As tickets for Concorde’s final flight go on sale this week, an American aerospace company has demonstrated a way to modify a supersonic jet to dramatically reduce its sonic boom.
The work could pave the way for a new generation of business jets quiet enough to fly at supersonic speed over populated areas.
Sonic booms are one [...]

Eurostar passengers had their first taste of high-speed rail travel in Britain as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link opened to the public Sunday, shaving 20 minutes off the trip from London to Paris and Brussels, Belgium.
Prime Minister Tony Blair officially opened the 46 new miles of track Sept. 16, but the line had remained closed [...]

The first solo European mission to the Moon is well on its way. The Smart 1 probe blasted off from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana at 2314 GMT.
Forty-two minutes later, ground controllers said the spacecraft had been released successfully from its Ariane 5 rocket launcher and was on its correct course.

Even before the electronic ink has dried on the e-page, a new generation of electronic paper may soon be able to bring a moving image to a foldable screen near you, according to Dutch scientists.

Detailed new observations of our Milky Way galaxy reveal thousands of stars being stripped from a neighbor that’s stretched into a twisted shape resembling a wet noodle. The Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, now a vestige of its former self, serves as a snack for the much larger Milky Way.

Snakelike robots that can find trapped survivors under earthquake rubble are being developed by researchers in Japan.
The robots can get into narrow places and their long, thin bodies disperse weight to prevent collapse of damaged structures.
One prototype called Kohga, developed by Fumitoshi Matsuno of Tokyo’s University of Electro-Communications, is more than six feet long [...]

Forget Iraq, OPEC, and that Alaskan wildlife refuge for the moment. Some of the clues to the world’s energy future may lie on your dinner plate.
The plants that grew the rice you’re eating also produce rice straw, which is mostly burned today but could be turned into fuel. Corn already produces ethanol, but stalks [...]

Under the new system, Transport for London will be able to track a commuter’s movements and it plans to retain information on journeys made for “a number of years”
Each card has a unique ID number linked to the registered owner’s name, which is recorded together with the location and time of the exchange every [...]

Thirty years ago today, Canada secured a place in computing history.
A small Toronto company, Micro Computer Machines Inc., announced a rather remarkable new machine: the MCM/70.
Small and powerful, the MCM/70 was one of the first portable, personal computers. It was also one of the first computers to use a microprocessor.

The game is one of the worlds largest hand carved pinball style game machines. (Candidate for the Guinness World Records).
It weighs 2.6 tons, is 11 metres long, 2.6 metres high, has 16 user operated levers, 72 metres of pathways for ball travel, 33 moving scenes, 37 electric motors, 22 sensors and 16 audio speakers [...]

Three Web sites that provide spam blocking lists have shut down as a result of crippling Internet attacks in what experts on Thursday said is an escalation in the war between spammers and opponents of unsolicited e-mails.
Anti-spam experts said that they think spammers are behind the attacks, although they have no way of proving it.
The [...]

A study found that nearly a third of white teenage girls in the United States have used tanning booths at least three times, suggesting an alarming number of teens are ignoring the dangers of skin cancer for the sake of sporting a good tan.
Twenty-eight percent of teenage girls and 7 percent of boys reported using [...]