Two worms, same brains – but one eats the other

IF TWO animals have identical brain cells, how different can they really be? Extremely. Two worm species have exactly the same set of neurons, but extensive rewiring allows them to lead completely different lives. Ralf Sommer of the Max Planck Institute...

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Colonial flags fly in Hong Kong as anger grows

HONG KONG: Sixteen years after Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule, public discontent with Beijing is swelling and protesters have been rallying around an unexpected symbol - the British colonial flag.Tens of thousands have taken to the streets in recent months in marches against Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, who took over from Donald Tsang last July after being elected by a 1,200-strong...

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Forty years ago, the Ohm F speaker was a game-changer; it still is

The Ohm F speakers(Credit:Ohm)Lincoln Walsh died a year before his radically innovative speaker technology made its commercial debut in the Ohm Acoustics F in 1972. The speaker featured an omnidirectional Walsh driver that projected a massive stereo soundstage. At the time of its introduction the $900 per pair Ohm F was hailed as one of the greatest speakers of all time by the international press....

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Pictures We Love: Best of January

Photograph by Dieu Nalio Chery, APThe magnitude 7 earthquake that struck near Port au Prince, Haiti, in January 2010 so devastated the country that recovery efforts are still ongoing.Professional dancer Georges Exantus, one of the many casualties of that day, was trapped in his flattened apartment for three days, according to news reports. After friends dug him out, doctors amputated his right leg...

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Ala. Standoff: Students Say Suspect Threatened to Kill

A brother and sister who escaped the school bus where a 5-year-old autistic boy was taken hostage by a retired Alabama trucker are speaking out about the standoff and the man who threatened the lives of the children on board."I look up and he's talking about threatening to kill us all or something," 14-year-old Terrica Singletary told ABC's "Good Morning America." "He's like,...

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Fishy origin of remora's shark-sucking hat

Julia Sklar, reporter(Image: Dave Johnson)This spectacular headpiece isn't the latest head-turningfashion in hats. Instead, this remora is sporting the feature that gives the fish itsnickname, "sharksucker": a sucking disc on top of its head, allowing it tobenignly attach itself to other sea creatures.The disc's ribbed appearance gives a clue to its intriguingorigin: the sucker develops from the...

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Motor Racing: Ferrari's Alonso predicts tighter 2013 F1 race

MILAN, Italy: Fernando Alonso said on Friday the battle for Formula One supremacy could be a lot tighter this year ahead of his bid to improve on two runner-up places behind Sebastian Vettel with a maiden title for Ferrari.Last season's world championship was remarkable for the fact there were seven race-winners in the first seven races before Alonso went toe-to-toe with Red Bull ace Vettel...

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Temple Run 2 scores record as fastest-growing mobile game

Temple Run 2 for Android(Credit:Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET)Temple Run addicts have propelled its sequel into new territory.In 13 days, Temple Run 2 has been downloaded more than 50 million times by iOS, Android, and Kindle users, developer Imangi Studios said yesterday, making it the fastest-growing mobile game ever.In reaching this milestone, the action game topped the previous record holder,...

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Will Deep-sea Mining Yield an Underwater Gold Rush?

A mile beneath the ocean's waves waits a buried cache beyond any treasure hunter's wildest dreams: gold, copper, zinc, and other valuable minerals.Scientists have known about the bounty for decades, but only recently has rising demand for such commodities sparked interest in actually surfacing it. The treasure doesn't lie in the holds of sunken ships, but in natural mineral deposits that...

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Ala. Hostage Suspect Had Court Date Scheduled

The retired Alabama trucker who shot a school bus driver and is now holding a kindergarten student in an underground bunker was scheduled to be in court Wednesday to answer for allegedly shooting at his neighbors in a dispute over a damaged speed bump.Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, has been holed up in a 6 by 8 foot bunker 4 feet underground with a 5-year-old autistic boy named Ethan...

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Fluorescent protein lets us read a fish's thoughts

The zebrafish spots its lunch. What goes through its brain? Now, for the first time, we can see exactly what it is thinking, thanks to a new way of studying single neurons that lets researchers track patterns of brain activity in a live animal. ...

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Scoot airlines to increase fleet, expand routes

SINGAPORE: Scoot, the low cost long haul subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, has flown about 600,000 passengers after seven months of operation.This means carrying about 85,000 travellers per month. The carrier also has a passenger load factor of about 81 per cent and currently flies to eight destinations, including Tianjin, Shenyang and the Gold Coast. Speaking at the "world's low cost...

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iOS 6.1 wins over 22 percent of iOS users, says report

Apple's iOS 6.1 has lured in a hefty number of users, at least according to data out yesterday from Onswipe.Released on Monday, Apple's latest OS update was downloaded by 21.8 percent of iOS users within just 36 hours. Among the iOS users tracked by Onswipe, 24 percent were iPhone owners and 21 percent iPad owners.Further, Onswipe data sent to CNET showed that 11.3 percent of users had already upgraded...

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Negotiations Drag Out for 5-Year-Old Hostage

An Alabama community is on edge today, praying for a 5-year-old boy being held hostage by a retired man who police say abducted him at gunpoint Tuesday afternoon.Nearly 40 hours have slowly passed since school bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, heroically tried to prevent the kidnapping, but was shot to death by suspect Jimmy Lee Dykes, a former truck driver, police said.Dykes...

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Minimum booze price will rein in alcohol abuse

Binge drinking and preloading – drinking cheap shop-bought alcohol before going to a bar – are two behaviours the UK government hopes to curb by imposing a minimum price for alcohol. A 10-week consultation period for the policy, which could see a ban on alcohol being sold at less than 45 pence per unit in England...

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BlackBerry 10 unveiled, with company name change

NEW YORK: BlackBerry launched its comeback effort Wednesday with a revamped platform and a pair of sleek new handsets, along with a company name change as part of a move to reinvent the smartphone maker.Canadian-based Research in Motion said it had changed its name to BlackBerry as it launched the BlackBerry 10, the new platform aimed at helping the firm regain traction in a market now...

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BlackBerry goes glam, enlists Alicia Keys

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins greets Alicia Keys as the company's new global creative director. (Credit:Sarah Tew/CNET) BlackBerry wants to be hip, and it's going to to Alicia Keys for help. The Canadian smartphone maker, which previously called itself Research in Motion, today named Keys as its global creative director. The position is one BlackBerry created to help "inspire the future" of the company....

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Timbuktu’s vulnerable manuscripts are city’s "gold"

French and Malian troops surrounded Timbuktu on Monday and began combing the labyrinthine city for Islamist fighters. Witnesses, however, said the Islamists, who claim an affiliation to al Qaeda and had imposed a Taliban-style rule in the northern Malian city over the last ten months, slipped into the desert a few days earlier. But before fleeing, the militants reportedly set fire to several...

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Giffords to Senate: 'Americans Are Counting on You'

Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, whose congressional career was ended by a bullet wound to her head, opened a Senate hearing on gun violence today by telling the panel, "Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important."She told the Senate to be "courageous" because "Americans are counting on you."Giffords sat alongside her astronaut husband Mark Kelly as...

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Drug reduces enlarged prostate with few side effects

Relief from the constant call of nature is the aim of a new drug, tested in rats, which can shrink an enlarged prostate and is likely to have few side effects. By the age of 60 an estimated 70 per cent of men have prostate enlargement. Treatment involves surgery or...

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US Senate committee approves Kerry nomination

  WASHINGTON: Senator John Kerry easily cleared the first hurdle of his confirmation as the next secretary of state Tuesday with a unanimous vote of approval by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.Kerry, President Barack Obama's pick to replace Hillary Clinton as the nation's top diplomat, must still be confirmed by a vote of the full Senate later in the day, but that was expected...

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Nooly weather app claims to-the-minute forecast accuracy

Can weather forecasting do better than "30 percent chance of showers"? What if it could tell you the minute it will start raining?"Nowcasting" app Nooly claims it can tell you when precipitation will start and end with an accuracy of five minutes. It can also tell you when storms will intensify. Nooly coverage, currently limited to the U.S. and Canada, can focus on an area within 0.4 square miles...

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Space Pictures This Week: Martian Gas, Cloud Trails

Image courtesy SDO/NASAThe sun is more than meets the eye, and researchers should know. They've equipped telescopes on Earth and in space with instruments that view the sun in at least ten different wavelengths of light, some of which are represented in this collage compiled by NASA and released January 22. (See more pictures of the sun.)By viewing the different wavelengths of light given off by the...

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Obama's Immigration Plan to Have More Direct Path

President Barack Obama is expected to lay out his principles for immigration reform in a speech in Las Vegas today that will include a potentially quicker path to citizenship than the bipartisan plan a group of senators unveiled earlier this week.The president will offer some new details about the White House's immigration reform plan, which expands on a blueprint it released in...

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First video reveals working tractor beam in action

Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV!--By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and Cfound at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. -->A working tractor beam has now been caught on video, showing how light can pull objects - on a microscopic scale.While it's well known that light can push objects as they follow the flow of photons, attracting...

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Iran sends monkey into space

TEHRAN: Iran on Monday successfully sent a monkey into orbit, paving the way for a manned space flight, Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi told state television.Arabic-language channel Al-Alam and other Iranian news agencies said the monkey returned alive after travelling in a capsule to an altitude of 120 kilometres (75 miles) for a sub-orbital flight."This success is the first step towards...

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Google: Here's how we handle government requests about you

Privacy is a constant concern for Internet users, and Google today detailed how it approaches government requests for user data. That includes a new section the company today added to its Transparency Report that answers questions users may have, such as "In what situations wouldn't you tell me about a request for my information?" (The answer is: Google can't notify you if your account is closed...

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