Patent applications from China rose sharply last year, suggesting that the country is making more use of the international patent system, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said on Wednesday.

The American Advertising Federation surveyed ad execs worldwide, and more than half said that they expected significant changes to the media landscape to happen even faster than they did last year.  YouTube, mash-ups and Second Life were among the innovations that ad execs said took them by surprise in 2006.

Whole Foods lifts ban on lobster sales after deciding on a humane way to kill them — they’ll be electrocuted instead of boiled.

Want to see how easy it is to have your identity stolen at a post office?

 It could be humanity’s oldest story of doomed love. Archaeologists have unearthed two skeletons from the Neolithic period locked in a tender embrace and buried outside Mantua, just 25 miles south of Verona, the romantic city where Shakespeare set the star-crossed tale of "Romeo and Juliet."

In Japan, toys aren’t just for kids. From drinking game accessories to ghost detectors, you can have fun at any age.

In Rio de Janeiro, 76 people have been killed in the past 7 days. The city is experiencing a spike in violent crime, much of it related to gangs and drug trafficking — 6,000 people were murdered there last year.

If you have kids, you’re probably tired of buying them new shoes every six months.

Spa owner Ada Barak uses California and Florida King snakes, corn snakes and milk snakes in her treatments.

Amateur videos, blogs and podcasts are categorized not only by their creators, but also by anyone who cares to save the content and tag it. This tagging, both by the original content creators and by those who use tagging systems such as del.icio.us, is both a search and a social function, according to a new […]

With Superbowl XLI over, hundreds of corporate jets fled the south Florida area this morning, placing additional strain on the nation’s ATC system. Here is an amazing photo of what that looked like.

Some guys in Copenhagen create a huge wave by throwing dynamite into the water, and start surfing the wave.

Targeted advertising via Internet protocol television (IPTV) is expected to produce major revenues within the next year, according to IPTV executives’ opinions revealed in a new report by Accenture and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Guests will be free to check out when they please if Hungary succeeds in converting its hulking jails into luxury hotels.

More accessible technology and maturing business models are opening the floodgates for Web video from both professionals and nonprofessionals, experts said at an MIT conference on Wednesday.

A Chinese zoo is looking for volunteers to live as monkeys for five days.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have conducted a study that concluded a few whiffs of androstadienone–a pheromone found in male sweat and perfumes–can raise levels of the hormone cortisol in women. Cortisol is associated with stress, but also arousal and brain activation.