Serious couch potatoes may soon have sofas that order take-out, turn lights off automatically and tune the TV to their favorite programs, without them ever having to lift a finger.
The “smart sofa” being developed by scientists at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, contains programmable microchip sensors on each leg that determine who’s sitting down [...]

University of Rochester researchers have found a new use for the radio frequency identification tags that manufacturers are aiming to use to track products like cartons of milk and sweaters.
These radio ID tags contain small radio transponders that broadcast unique identification numbers. Radio receivers can monitor the tags to track inventories in real time. [...]

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 scientists in the Netherlands.
Hot on the heels of the invention of a wafer-thin foldable screen that can display static type and [...]

How’s this for a get-rich scheme? Find a way to make $1,000 from anyone who sends you an unsolicited e-mail. Like most such schemes, it sounds too good to be true, but this one has the state of California’s imprimatur. Last night, Gov. Gray Davis signed into law a bill that outlaws sending most commercial [...]

The European Commission project Foodtrace, with the support of the European association for sure & secure identification, IDtrack, is bringing together in Barcelona, Spain, on October 30/31, representatives of key players in the European food industry. The objective of the summit is to reach agreement on the recommendations which FoodTrace will present to the European [...]

Party drugs like Ecstasy and amphetamines have overtaken heroin and cocaine as the fastest-growing global narcotics menace, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
In a report unveiled in Italy, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimated more than 40 million people around the world had taken synthetic drugs in the last year, more than the [...]

Nature reports a contest that was launched in Britain today, to produce the oldest laboratory mouse. Current record in 5 years — 150 in human years. From the page : “Researchers can use any technique to boost longevity, including genetic manipulation and stem-cell therapy”. Winners will receive cash for every day beyond the current record. [...]

Ted Larson arrives at geek headquarters smack in the middle of the much-awaited season premiere of UPN’s latest Star Trek show, Enterprise. The former chief technical officer at an Internet startup, Larson sports blue jeans, a white Tech TV T-shirt, and loafers with white socks, and is carrying a large, tattered FedEx box that contains [...]

An anti-epilepsy drug has shown promising results for treating cocaine addiction in a preliminary US trial.
Gamma-vinyl-GABA (GVG), also known as vigabatrin, works in part by blocking the craving for cocaine. When combined with counselling, 40 per cent of addicts successfully gave up their habit for the duration of the sixty-day study.

Cells taken from cloned mouse embryos have been used to successfully treat a condition similar to Parkinson’s disease in humans.
The breakthrough, by US researchers, could assist the search for a cure for the common brain condition.
The embryonic “stem cells”, reports the journal Nature Biotechnology, were grown into new tissue which was implanted into the [...]

Chip giant Intel is backing a novel way to make it easier to input text on mobile handsets.
At its autumn developer event, Intel showed off a concept universal communicator using the Fastap keypad that fits 26 letters alongside the numbers on a handset.
The Fastap keypad does away with the need to press keys [...]

Physicists in the US have built a laser with a single atom for the first time. Jeff Kimble and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology made the device by trapping a cold caesium atom in an optical cavity. The one-atom laser produces nonclassical light that could have applications in quantum information technology.
In a conventional [...]

STARTUP JUNKIE UNDERGROUND
DATE: Tuesday, September 23rd from 5:30-8:30 pm
LOCATION: Pinnacle Club, 555 – 17th Street, Denver, CO.
SPEAKER: Bernard Lietaer, Co-Architect of the Euro
REGISTER: Click here.
TOPIC: Typically local economies struggle to keep their heads above water as they get buoyed around by national forces outside of their own control. Laws and regulations imposed on [...]

Paedophiles are to be electronically tagged in the UK for the first time in a move that could prompt a revolution in the treatment and monitoring of sex offenders.
A British company is to hold talks with Ministers in the next few weeks with a view to launching a Home Office-backed trial involving between 100 [...]

U.S. researchers said on Sunday they had used cloned cells to treat a Parkinson-like disease in mice and said it provided a good experimental basis for testing whether so-called therapeutic cloning will work.
While they did not clone each individual mouse, the cells they used were from cloned embryos and relieved the symptoms of artificially induced [...]

Homes on the Arctic tip of Norway started getting power from the moon on Saturday via a unique subsea power station driven by the rise and fall of the tide.
A tidal current in a sea channel near the town of Hammerfest, caused by the gravitational tug of the moon on the earth, started turning the [...]

China is to contribute to a new global satellite navigation system being developed by European nations.
The Galileo satellite system will offer a more accurate civilian alternative to the Global Positioning System (GPS), operated by the US military. China will provide 230m Euros ($259m) in funding and will cooperate with technical, manufacturing and market development.
“China will [...]

Countless research projects around the world into cancer and other major diseases are producing bogus or misleading results because investigators are studying the wrong type of cell.
The mistakes arise when fast-growing “rogue cells” contaminate cell cultures and swamp the correct cells. A team’s work on prostate cancer, for example, might turn out to be worthless [...]

A new procedure in which nanoparticles are injected into tumors and then heated is showing promise in fighting cancer.
Scientists at Berlin’s Charite Hospital developed the technique, in which nanoparticles made from iron oxide battle various forms of cancer.
Scientists have known for some time that cancer cells are vulnerable to heat.

Soon your sunglasses could help you capture all the important moments of your life.
A prototype pair of sunglasses with a camera built in to them has been created by Hewlett Packard researchers.
“It means you now have a wearable camera which nobody will notice and can take pictures while being involved in events,” said Huw [...]

The world’s first macadamia nut-fuelled powerplant was officially opened today at Gympie, north of Brisbane.
The Macadamia Cogeneration Facility will use the discarded shells of the nuts to power up to 1200 Queensland homes in its first year.
The $3 million “green power” facility is a joint venture between the Queensland government-owned Ergon Energy and [...]

The U.S. House passed a bill Wednesday that would permanently ban governments in the U.S. from levying taxes unique to the Internet.
The House, on a voice vote, passed the Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act, which would permanently prohibit taxing jurisdictions in the U.S. from levying such taxes as e-mail taxes, bandwidth taxes, or bit taxes. [...]

He wears a baby-blue spandex jumpsuit and shiny gold panties, gloves, cape, boots and goggles. He wields a giant, metal-cutting circular power saw.
Who is Angle Grinder Man?
He is Britain’s self-styled “first wheel-clamp and speed camera vigilante cum subversive superhero philanthropist entertainer type person.” That’s who.

Mobile phones used by healthcare personnel in the hospital can spread dangerous infectious agents, according to investigators in Israel.
In 2002, Dr. Abraham Borer, of Soroka University Medical Center in Beer-Sheva, and others randomly screened 124 hospital personnel for the germ Acinetobacter baumannii, a common source of in-hospital infections.
They found that 12 percent of healthcare providers’ [...]

In an industrial building on the Jersey City waterfront, workers busily printed supersize images for building facades and billboards intended to paper even the most casual viewer with brand awareness. Suspended near the rafters were full-color images of the youth tribes of Gap and giant emblems of National Basketball Association teams; on a far wall [...]