An alarmed SEC says that teams of thieves are lifting passwords from home PCs — and emptying online brokerage accounts.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will publish history’s first “storyline patent” application today from an application filed in November, 2003. Inventor Andrew Knight will assert publication-based provisional patent rights against the entertainment industry.

At the new “Explore Evolution” museum exhibit in Kansas, visitors pass a banner showing the face of a girl next to the face of a chimpanzee for a lesson on how the two are “cousins in life’s family tree.”

Super-fast optical computers are a step closer thanks to research breakthroughs that may lead to silicon chips that can process information as electronic bits or flashes of light.

In 2004, when the U.S. State Department first started talking about embedding RFID chips in passports, the outcry from privacy advocates was huge. When the State Department issued its draft regulation in February, it got 2,335 comments, 98.5 percent negative.

A new HIV test the size of a credit card promises to diagnose the disease in minutes rather than weeks, and could be deployed in sub-Saharan Africa as early as next year.