China as a nation has grown in stature since unleashing its economy more than two decades ago but so have its people, who are getting taller, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Pregnant women who eat fish more than three times a week could be putting their baby at risk because of higher mercury levels in their blood, according to a study by Taiwanese researchers.

According to the NPD Group, the smartphone market in the US has entered a "growth spurt." October 2006 sales soared 230% from January of this year, rising from 216,000 units to nearly 715,000.

People with coronary artery disease who are taking aspirin to thin the blood and thereby lower their odds of having a heart attack, run the risk of having a major adverse cardiac event if they stop taking aspirin, according to a new report.

Recently the flourishing virtual economy of online community Second Life produced its first real-life millionaire, estate agent Ailin Graef, and announced it had reached the one million member mark. However, all’s not entirely well in the virtual world.

The more your belly sticks out, the greater your risk of developing heart disease, a new study shows.

IBM took a look at the future - five years out, bringing together 150,000 people from 104 countries to pitch in their prognostications. Then the company narrowed that list down to the five innovations that were the "most impactful, and probably the most likely to be successful" by 2012, said George Pohle, IBM’s vice president for business […]

Robert Cringely:  Several readers asked me to comment this week on a very entertaining blog post from New Zealand: A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection, by Peter Gutmann (it is in this week’s links). The essay characterizes the Digital Rights Management in Windows Vista as a suicide note from Microsoft because Vista’s DRM […]

Dissatisfied with existing designs, a small Amherst, Mass., company called Skyacht Aircraft is working on building a better hot-air balloon. Actually, Skyacht is touting its project as a "personal blimp"–that is, "a hot-air balloon that can be maneuvered in nearly perfect quiet," according to the company’s Web site.

Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.

Maryland and Virginia are moving ahead with a form of congestion pricing on the Beltway and Interstate 95. In exchange for building additional lanes, contractors will be allowed to collect tolls that will vary by the minute. When traffic is heavy, the price will rise to whatever level is needed to keep the express lanes […]

Big charities keep getting bigger. But are they the best places for most people to send their hard-earned dollars? With so much money flowing to the most élite fund raisers, it’s a fair question.