Gaming chair mimics a full-motion simulator

Paul Marks, chief technology correspondent(Image: Greg Pease/Getty)Multi-million-dollar full-motion flight simulators give trainee pilots a good approximation of the ups and downs of real flight, but the powerful hydraulic rams they are mounted on make them far too big, expensive and dangerous for the home. Gamers should take heart, though: a novel kind of gaming chair called a haptic seat might...

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Coal use set to surpass oil in a decade: IEA

PARIS: Coal is set to surpass oil as the world's top fuel within a decade, driven by growth in emerging market giants China and India, with even Europe finding it hard to cut use despite pollution concerns, according to a report published Tuesday."Thanks to abundant supplies and insatiable demand for power from emerging markets, coal met nearly half of the rise in global energy demand...

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Gangnam Style, Barack vs Mitt among YouTube top 2012 videos

The Gangnam style craze grabbed the top spot among YouTube's most popular videos of 2012.(Credit:YouTube/Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET)YouTube watchers kept busy this year checking out videos related to Gangnam Style, the presidential elections, and Facebook parenting for the troubled teen.Rewinding back through 2012, YouTube yesterday posted its list of the top ten trending videos for the year.A...

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GRAIL Mission Goes Out With a Bang

Jane J. Lee On Friday, December 14, NASA sent their latest moon mission into a death spiral. Rocket burns nudged GRAIL probes Ebb and Flow into a new orbit designed to crash them into the side of a mountain near the moon's north pole today at around 2:28 p.m. Pacific standard time. NASA named the crash site after late astronaut Sally Ride, America's first woman in space.Although the mountain...

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Multidimensional black holes get electric when flexed

Bending a black hole can juice it up. In extra dimensions, a black hole behaves like a fluid and a solid at the same time, and flexing the solid form may generate an electric field. Although these effects exist only in the theoretical realm, the underlying...

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Government can help in training of foreign workers: SNEF

SINGAPORE: The Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) says the government can help in defraying the cost of training foreign workers. In an interview with MediaCorp, SNEF president Stephen Lee said the federation is in discussions with various agencies to see how this can be done. Mr Lee pointed out that the productivity of foreign workers must be raised in order for Singapore...

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Poll: Did you like the smoother, HFR Hobbit?

If you're one of the many, many people who saw "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" over the weekend, chances are you didn't see the film exactly as the director, Peter Jackson, intended. But if you were, please let us know whether you liked it by voting in the poll. The Hobbit is the first major film to be released in a higher-frame-rate 3D version called HFR. Unlike traditional releases, which are...

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Grave Obstacle to Chinese Construction Boom

A.R. Williams China's construction boom waits for no one, dead or alive. In the city of Taiyuan (map) that means a multistory residential complex is taking shape around a lone grave, which now sits atop a tower of mud about 30 feet (10 meters) above the building's excavated foundations.The family of the deceased—buried there in 2004—has refused an offer of 1,000,000 yuan (about $160,000)...

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Newtown Couple Vow to Live for Dead Daughter

The parents of Jessica Rekos, a 6-year-old girl who died during the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., said they are committed to keeping their daughter's memory alive despite their pain."We will talk about her every day, we will live for her," Krista Rekos told ABC News. "We will make sure her brother knows what an amazing person she was."Richard and...

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Zebrafish made to grow pre-hands instead of fins

PERHAPS the little fish embryo shown here is dancing a jig because it has just discovered that it has legs instead of fins. Fossils show that limbs evolved from fins, but a new study shows how it may have happened, live in the lab. ...

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