Almost a decade after Google became a household name, Microsoft’s launch of Bing may be poised to give the world’s dominant Internet search engine its first serious threat in years, as Yahoo, Google and Microsoft …

Michael Gecan reveals an urban landscape in which careerism, nepotism, and greed are the principal movers in policy, while the institutions that preserve and advance communities—schools, churches, affordable housing, recreational opportunities—have fallen prey to the …

Hutch Carpenter – “A key aspect of what one might term ‘Innovation 2.0′ is the ability to share ideas among a community, and have that community help identify and refine top ideas. It turns out …

MP3 … Moira Gunn interviews Zack Lynch, co-author of The Neuro Revolution. The book reviews how history has already progressed through an agricultural revolution, an industrial revolution, and an information revolution and foretells a fast …

Tom Foremski – “There is a lot of journalism that can be done by mining data in public databases.” … Read more

The World Economic Forum reorders the world of finance by rating Britain and Australia over the U.S.—and booting France and Germany from the top 10… Read more

US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano cut the ribbon on a state-of-the-art unified command center for government cybersecurity efforts…. Read more

Generating energy on a large scale by mixing salt and fresh water is both technically possible and practical. The worldwide potential for this clean form of energy – ‘blue energy’ or ‘blue electricity’ – is …

BusinessWeek’s review of information handed over to regulators shows the call-management service has more than 1 million users. It may be expanded abroad… Read more

With $22 billion in cash behind him, CEO Schmidt wants to make an acquisition per month. Find out what companies may be in Google’s sights… Read more

EU leaders agree a conditional deal to help other nations fight global warming, ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit…. Read more

Rosabeth Moss Kanter – "Overall, the Whole Earth message encouraged green awareness, self-sufficiency, healthy behaviors, and communal living. Back then, millions of young people liked this message and went back to the land. But the …

European researchers have created the first integrated semantic search platform that integrates text, video and audio. The system can ‘watch’ films, ‘listen’ to audio and ‘read’ text to find relevant responses to semantic search terms. …

Danny Jensen – “IBM has just announced a new iPhone application called Breadcrumbs, which will give consumers detailed information about food when they scan the barcode of packages in the grocery store.” … Read more

Mobile phones are on the verge of becoming powerful tools to collect data on many issues, ranging from global health to the environment…. Read more

A new music feature rolled out by Google will bring its U.S. searchers one click away from listening to a full-length song…. Read more

U.S. and Chinese companies will join up to build a 36,000-acre wind farm in Texas, showing how the industry continues to expand globally despite tough economic conditions. … Read more

Russia’s space agency is planning to build a new spaceship with a nuclear engine, its chief announced…. Read more

Hold Esquire’s December issue in front of a webcam, and an on-screen image of the magazine pops to life, letters flying off the cover. Shift and tilt the magazine, and the animation on the screen …

A new breed of rechargeable zinc-air batteries is soon to be available, and may replace lithium-ion batteries in cell phones, laptops and other consumer items. Lithium-ion batteries store only a third of the energy and …

A new neuroscience of intelligence is revealing that not all brains work in the same way… Read more

Stan Schroeder – “Yesterday, we wrote about a new, free product from Google: Google Maps Navigation. Another free Google perpetual beta product, one might say; nothing to get overly excited about. Well, the first reviews …

Gina Chen – “The Omaha World-Herald Co. announced this week that it has purchased WikiCity, a hyperlocal site with local content for just more than 22,000 U.S. communities that I wrote about here in August”… …

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, one of the oldest publishers in the United States, plans to unveil today the biggest deal in its history: a $40 million, multiyear contract with Detroit public schools. But this is not …

The British government said Wednesday that it would block persistent illegal file sharers’ Internet connections by forcing service providers to pull the plug on lawbreakers. … Read more

By taking advantage of the vagaries of the natural world, Duke University engineers have developed a novel approach that they believe can more efficiently harvest electricity from the motions of everyday life…. Read more

Banning trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna is justified by the extent of their decline, scientists advising fisheries regulators suggest…. Read more

Google is set to launch a free service for smartphones that will combine GPS navigation, voice-activated search and real-time traffic updates, one connected to Google’s massive store of data…. Read more

Many college graduates are passing up industrial centers and former hotspots in the Southwest, which have been hit hard by the recession, in favor of life in urban, high-tech meccas. Their moves are fueling a …

An armada of robots may one day fly above the mountain tops of Saturn’s moon Titan, cross its vast dunes and sail in its liquid lakes. … Read more

See and hear how Ethiopians save water in the desert… Read more

Food prices will more than quadruple in real terms within 20 years unless urgent action is taken to combat climate change, an expert has warned…. Read more

Time running out for Kyrgyzstan’s retreating glaciers… Read more

China’s role in the global energy market is on the rise, with its purchase of oil and gas supplies worldwide totaling an estimated $15 billion so far this year, double the amount of 2008, National …

Johns Hopkins scientists report having used a commercially available drug to successfully “rescue” animal brain cells that they had intentionally damaged by manipulating a newly discovered gene that links susceptibility genes for schizophrenia and autism.The …

President Barack Obama announced the largest modernization of the US electricity grid in history, in a 3.4-billion-dollar bid to launch a new era of renewable energy consumption…. Read more

Toyota is developing a solar charging station for electric cars and plug-in hybrids, making a green technology even greener. It has also designed a battery charger for mounting inside an electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid …

Real Audio | Windows Media … The best-selling authors of Freakonomics return to challenge assumptions about how we make decisions, whether incentives work, and what’s really good for the world. [Diane Rehm] (51m 20s)

China is tightening controls over some of the worlds most obscure but valuable materials. The Asian economic superpower currently produces more than 90 percent of the worlds so-called rare earth metals, which are used in …

Should the U.S. subsidize vast high-voltage lines to transport wind and solar electricity to the big cities?… Read more

A map designed to show the predicted effects of a 4C rise in average temperature have been unveiled by the UK government…. Read more

Imagine for a moment seeing the world through the eyes of a Terminator cyborg. Information on objects, locations and people automatically pop up in real time as you encounter them. Need directions to the nearest …

Financial services compatible with Islamic rules—already available in Britain—soon will launch in Germany. France and Switzerland are watching with interest… Read more

A new study by researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP), King’s College London has discovered abnormalities in the white matter of the brain that seem to be critical for the timing of schizophrenia…. Read …

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the U.S. voted last week to start a process to formulate rules that could force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to uphold six principles that would preserve net neutrality, or …

The tools and techniques of Web 2.0 are starting to help scientists collaborate and manage research projects. … Read more

Sustaining the ocean and the bounties it provides… Read more

The Internet is set to undergo one of the biggest changes in its four-decade history with the expected approval this week of international domain names – or addresses – that can be written in languages …

Scientists plan to develop a paint coating for military vehicles which would soak up chemical agents and then decontaminate itself…. Read more

There’s been an important and relatively sudden change taking place over the last couple of years in the way that we interact with the Web. While direct access or search activity has been (and still …

Privately held French big-box chain Auchan is growing fast in China, Russia, and elsewhere as it challenges Wal-Mart, Carrefour, and Tesco… Read more

Sleeping in nap pods at work, multimedia books, 3D gaming, MPs at our beck and call –and exercise that’s actually fun. Whatever next?… Read more

The stereotypical library is dying — and it’s taking its shushing ladies, dank smell and endless shelves of books with it…. Read more

Companies would do well to take a page from Whole Foods, which limits executive pay to no more than 19 times the average worker wage… Read more

A version that brightens up instantly, costs just 88p a year to run and lasts up to 25 years has gone on sale in Britain for the first time…. Read more

Mobile phone subscriptions in Africa have defied the world economic crisis by growing faster than in any other region of the world since 2003, according to a United Nations report…. Read more

Scientists have overcome a key barrier to the clinical use of stem cells with a technique which transforms regular body cells into artificial stem cells without the need for introducing foreign genetic materials, which could …

China is building its cyberwarfare capabilities and appears to be using the growing technical abilities to collect U.S. intelligence through a sophisticated and long-term computer attack campaign, according to an independent report…. Read more

Amazon.com Inc. is trying to get more people to buy the electronic books that are compatible with its Kindle gadget by offering free software for people to read them on a computer…. Read more

Experts reviewing the US space programme back using commercial services to launch astronauts…. Read more

The impact of China’s growth on South America’s largest country. (5m 43s)

Recently, at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, N.J. Tao and collaborators have found a way to make a key electrical component on a phenomenally tiny scale…. Read more

Driven by fluctuations in oil prices, and seduced by the prospect of easing climate change, experts are ramping up efforts to squeeze fuel out of a promising new organism: pond scum…. Read more

China tower blazes a path in green building technology… Read more

Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s search engine are preparing real-time searches of Twitter and Facebook. Targeted ads could follow… Read more

For the first time in the U.S., unused TV broadcast channels freed up by the transition to digital TV are being used to wirelessly deliver high-speed Internet connectivity to business, education and community users. These …

They think it’s pointless, narcissistic. Some don’t even know what it is. Even so, more young adults and teens – normally at the cutting edge of technology – are finally coming around to Twitter, using …

A Web where Chinese is the dominant language, and connections are so fast that distinctions between audio, video and text are blurred is perhaps just five years away, the head of Google said…. Read more

P. W. Singer explores the advances of robotics in warfare in his book Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and 21st Century Conflict…. Read more

Over the past 30 years, microfinance has grown to be a powerful global phenomenon. It can be even more powerful when combined with a nascent trend — the rise of microfranchising. … Read more

Developed by researchers at Lund University in Sweden and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy, the Smart Hand project has given patient, Robin af Ekenstam the sense of touch in his new prosthesis hand…. Read more

A College Board report paints a grim picture: Tuition is rising while incomes are flat—and there’s very little schools can do about it… Read more

Two Gen-Y German entrepreneurs are bucking the Internet trend with a venture to print newspapers-on-demand from domestic and international sources… Read more

The struggle of American courts to control the explosion of intellectual property rights violations on some of the most traveled highways of cyberspace poses a legal challenge to the judicial system with implications that could …

Eleventh-grader Philip Marten’s second-hour class is orchestra. But first hour, third hour, fourth hour and the rest of his school day are spent not at school but at home in Shawnee, Kan…. Read more

Barnes & Noble Inc. is expected to unveil an electronic-book reader to compete with Amazon.com’s Kindle in the still-small arena where some see book-selling’s future playing out…. Read more

The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) released new data today showing that a staggering 285 million people worldwide have diabetes. The latest figures from the IDF Diabetes Atlas indicate that people in low and middle-income countries …

How fog nets are helping Peru’s parched capital… Read more

After a year or more of fruitless job searching, some laid-off workers decide to launch their own businesses…. Read more

As consumers store addresses, e-mail, and other data from their mobile phones via online services, the potential for lost data is rising… Read more

Warren Buffett has invested in China’s BYD, but columnists Anil Gupta and Haiyan Wang caution against putting too much faith in its early-mover advantage… Read more

The European Commission said it may revise copyright law to make it easier for companies like Google Inc. to scan printed books and distribute digital copies over the Internet…. Read more

Tiny crystals could hold the key to creating new super computers with massive memories, scientists believe…. Read more

Ford Motor Co. this year will spend 25% of its marketing dollars on digital media, more than twice the amount spent by the industry…. Read more

Phone glued to your ear? Forever checking your emails? You may be the victim of the new pandemic…. Read more

The European Union used the world’s biggest book fair to launch the EU Bookshop’s digital library, making more than 50 years of documents in about 50 languages available for free on the Internet. … Read …

"Garbage" and "hysterical propaganda" was one angry reaction at the world’s biggest book fair this year when Google, the world’s biggest Internet search service, defended plans to turn millions of books into electronic literature available …

About a hundred houses float on a lake in the Amsterdam neighbourhood of Ijburg –a testament to how the Dutch are trying to turn their traditional enemy, water, into an ally against overcrowding…. Read more

SIMYO and Ahead of Time presents the future of mobile media and communication. This film is presenting a summary of key result of the open think tank MOCOM 2020. (5m)

Real Audio | Windows Media … As a media critic, he analyzes both the medium and the message. As an author, he infuses mysteries with cutting edge forensics and infuses science fiction with philosophical meaning. …

Within a couple of years, China is expected to surpass the U.S. as Africa’s primary trading partner — projecting a trading relationship of $100 billion a year. (5m 52s)

A group of scientists attempt to combat rising sea levels and an overdose of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by creating artificial trees. A video from the BBC science show ‘Five Ways to Save the …

China turns crisis into opportunity. … Read more

Vividly conveying the people, the adventure, the science, and the lure of the sea that shaped Cousteau’s life, Matsen paints a luminous portrait of a man who profoundly changed the way we view, and treat, …

Rio’s favelas are home to a third of the city’s population, but are almost invisible on maps — a situation five young women are trying to change with the help of GPS and the Internet. …

From vast wind farms and solar arrays to smart grids and distributed power generation, Germany is moving fast into the new age of green electricity… Read more

Once-in-a-lifetime floods in the Philippines, India’s delayed monsoon, and extensive drought in Australia are taking their toll on this year’s rice crops, demonstrating the vulnerability of rice to extreme weather…. Read more

Moving patients between beds and wheelchairs can be physically tiring for both them and their carers. Now Panasonic have created a revolutionary robotic bed that will transform itself from one to the other…. Read more

A magnetic charge can behave and interact just like an electric charge in some materials, according to new research led by the London Centre for Nanotechnology…. Read more

Henry Markram says the mysteries of the mind can be solved — soon. Mental illness, memory, perception: they’re made of neurons and electric signals, and he plans to find them with a supercomputer that models …

Scientists have grown a piece of heart muscle – and then watched it beat – by using stem cells from a mouse embryo, a big step toward one day repairing damage from heart attacks…. Read …

Pensioner Peter Welton was amazed when a piece of red-hot debris crashed through his roof in July. Now experts have confirmed the object had travelled hundreds of miles from OUTER SPACE…. Read more

Scientists have given fruit flies memories of traumatic experiences that never actually happened by directly manipulating nerve cells in their brains. … Read more

Google Inc. is launching a new online service that will let readers buy electronic versions of books and read them on such gadgets as cell phones, laptops and possibly e-book devices…. Read more

An innovative diagnostic technique invented by a Monash University researcher could dramatically fast-track the detection of mental and neurological illnesses…. Read more

MP3… Is a new world dawning and more importantly, are we prepared to live in it? Krys Boyd talks with Bob Garfield, co-host of NPR’s On the Media and author of the new book The …

RealMedia… William Kamkwamba describes dreaming of bringing light to his village in Africa and how he taught himself physics and used spare parts to build a windmill that produced electricity. [Diane Rehm] (51m 20s)

Solar Power Satellites (SPS) are fairly large structures in space that convert solar energy, captured as solar irradiation, into an energy form that can be transmitted wirelessly (Wireless Power Transmission – WPT) to any remote …

As someone who spends real money for real stuff at Costco, Safeway and Starbucks, it boggles my mind to ponder that the U.S. market in "virtual goods" will reach $1 billion this year and hit …

Carbon dioxide capture and storage technologies may represent a cost-effective, viable option to help China continue to meet its growing energy demands while also delivering deep and sustained reductions in industrial greenhouse gas emissions, according …

The Arctic Ocean could be largely ice free and open to shipping in summer in as little as ten years’ time, an expert says…. Read more

Starting in mid-2010, new versions of gadgets like cameras, cell phones and computers will be able to talk to each other using Wi-Fi without needing to connect to a wireless network first…. Read more

The summer road tripping season is over, but with the holidays on the horizon, people soon will be piling into their cars for annual pilgrimages to family and friends…. Read more

In a new study in the journal Ecological Monographs, ecologists estimate that Arctic lands and oceans are responsible for up to 25 percent of the global net sink of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Under current predictions …

Come July 2010, every Fin will have access to a 1 Megabit-per-second broadband connection. Finland just became the first country in the world to sign a law that provides every citizen of the country with …

Each of the 6.7 billion people on Earth has a signature body odor — the chemical counterpart to fingerprints — and scientists are tracking down those odiferous arches, loops, and whorls in the “human odorprint”; …

With the speed of computers so regularly seeing dramatic increases in their processing speed, it seems that it shouldn’t be too long before the machines become infinitely fast — except they can’t…. Read more

The old interruptive model of marketing doesn’t work. Customers are tuning out. They no longer listen to in-your-face messages. Instead, they demand meaning in the brands they buy and the marketing that reaches them. Marketing …

Swiss researchers have found that Alpine glaciers melting under the impact of climate change are releasing highly toxic pollutants that had been absorbed by the ice for decades…. Read more

Researchers at Columbia University have developed a statistical method that accurately predicts how an organism will respond to dozens of commonly used drugs. This clinical and conceptual advance moves medical science a step closer to …

Maglev trains could shorten the travel time between Tokyo and Osaka to 67 minutes from the 138 minutes it takes today’s fastest bullet trains, Central Japan Railway Co. said…. Read more

A year after the island nation’s savage economic collapse, unemployment and import prices are higher. But Iceland seems remarkably placid—even happy… Read more

Having grown in fits and starts, Wal-Mart’s international unit has a new game plan. Can it master world markets?… Read more

Svante Arrhenius — a Swedish chemist — first suggested in 1896 that continued burning of coal would increase CO2 concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere and warm the planet. Almost 100 years later, in 1990, a …

Two young German entrepreneurs presented what they described as a Europe-wide first: a newspaper tailored to readers’ individual wishes and delivered to their door before 8:00 am…. Read more

Tiny strands of RNA previously dismissed as cellular junk are actually very stable molecules that may play significant roles in cellular processes, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the …

One of the more interesting developments in terms of technology is the virtual economy — and how it translates into something that involves real money…. Read more

Businesses and governments need to invest at least US$2.4-trillion between now and 2050 to capture carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants and factories and pump them underground, the International…… Read more

Kellogg’s has developed a hi-tech method to stamp out imitation cereals – by branding individual flakes of corn with the company logo…. Read more

Wood pallets used to ship food in the Washington Metropolitan Area tested positive for three types of deadly food poisoning bacteria, raising new concerns about the risks wood pallets and other shipping materials pose to …

Why remote-control insects are creating a buzz … Read more

Tim Brown says the design profession is preoccupied with creating nifty, fashionable objects — even as pressing questions like clean water access show it has a bigger role to play. He calls for a shift …

Today’s kids don’t just write for grades anymore. They write to shake the world. Moreover, they are writing more than any previous generation, ever, in history. They navigate in a bewildering new arena where writers …

Advances in technology mean we may need to rewrite the geo-strategy textbooks for the next half century, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard…. Read more

European states agree in principle to a re-shaping of their plans to explore Mars. … Read more

Drought forces dreadful choice for Africa’s herdsmen … Read more

Scientists are considering using German-built robots for clearing rogue satellites from Earth’s orbit or pushing them into outer space. Robots that rescue failing satellites and push “dead” ones into outer space should be ready in …

Tracking space debris for collision avoidance and human flight safety has been a priority for government space agencies since the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957. Yet the most recent satellite collision has revealed a …

Most corporates worldwide might have formulated guidelines for their employees dress codes, but when it comes to the virtual world most of them seems to be now waking up to the need of having a …

Neuroscientists have discovered that learning to juggle causes changes in white matter, the nerve strands which help different parts of the brain communicate with each other…. Read more

Is it important to be connected? Well, consider this: If Facebook were a country, it would have the sixth largest population in the world. The truth is, we no longer live in a world of …

Based on more than a decade of research, The Upside of Turbulence draws lessons from companies that have consistently spotted and exploited opportunities that rivals have missed. The book explores realms ranging from improvisational comedy …

MP3… Mukul Devichand tells the story of the Europeans who are trying to persuade China’s expanding middle class to ditch their noodles and soya in favour of pricey European fine foods. [BBC World Service] (23m …

MP3… Michael Buerk analyses the potential – and the dangers – of citizen journalism. He talks to bloggers and critics from Sri Lanka, Iran, Burma, and Iraq. [BBC World Service] (23m 16s)

The Smart Grid may very well pit environmental concerns against thorny privacy issues. If you think such debates are purely philosophical, you’re behind the times…. Read more

Experiments on mice have found that there is only one brain cell which fires our circadian rhythm – or body clock – whereas it was previously thought there were two…. Read more

USA Today expects to report the largest decline in circulation in its 27-year history, threatening its No. 1 position among U.S. dailies as the growth of online news and the slump in travel pummel the …

What if you could remember everything? In this lecture, Jim Gemmell and Gordon Bell discuss their new book, Total Recall How the E-Memory Revolution will Change Everything. Bell and Gemmell will draw on their experience …

Former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern talks to Allan Gregg about his new book The Global Deal. (27m)

Nearly everything that defines our way of life requires energy-consuming devices, from cars, planes, trains, and air conditioning to lights and computers. And our global appetite for energy keeps growing as population and wealth obliges …

This is not a book by designers for designers; this is a blueprint for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking — an approach for creative problem solving — into all facets of their organizations, …

GM’s iconic Hummer brand has been acquired by a Chinese heavy construction equipment maker for about $150 million, marking another step in the long march by China to develop a world class local automobile industry. …

The success of Web 2.0 means everyone can now publish – but at what cost? At any measure it’s going to be a bumpy ride for all involved, and it will likely be a long …

Emergency preparedness is generally considered to be a good thing, yet there is no plan regarding what we might do should we be faced with a climate emergency. Such an emergency could take the form …

The European Commission’s Internet chief cautions over future threats to privacy from social networking, RFID tags, and behavioral targeting of online ads… Read more

Studies in China and Colorado by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and cooperators have revealed some interesting tactics on how to irrigate with limited water, based on a crop`s critical growth stages…. Read more

In recent years, quantum computers have lost some of their luster. In the 1990s, it seemed that they might be able to solve a class of difficult but common problems – the so-called NP-complete problems …

Hydrogen researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory have reached a milestone on the road to reducing carbon emissions and protecting the nation against the effects of peaking world oil production…. Read …

A Japanese menswear company has begun selling an "anti-swine flu" business suit that it says can reduce the risk of catching the virus…. Read more

Can you really trust long life expectancy predictions?… Read more

Stephen Roach, who predicted the downturn, says the West and Asia need to trade spending habits…. Read more

Advances in digital technologies give writers many avenues to publish and distribute their literary dreams…. Read more

Scientists at The Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee have successfully produced liver cells from patients’ skin cells opening the possibility of treating a wide range of diseases that affect liver function…. Read more

University of Florida chemists have pioneered a method to tease out promising molecular structures for capturing energy, a step that could speed the development of more efficient, cheaper solar cells…. Read more

How dependent have we become on mobile phones, and are social networking sites changing the nature of our relationships with other people? A three-year Oxford University study is to address these issues…. Read more

A team of researchers from the State University of Pennsylvania (USA) and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) have developed a technique to replicate biological structures, such as butterfly wings, on a nano scale. The …

President Lee Myung-Bak offered full government support to help South Korean firms secure about 10 percent of the global electric car market by 2015…. Read more

NASA has downgraded the threat from a near-Earth asteroid…. Read more

Clemson bioengineer Frank Alexis is designing new ways to target drugs and reduce the chances for side effects…. Read more

After two years of design, experimentation, fund-raising and building, the University of Arizona’s Solar Decathlon team has completed construction of its 800-square-foot solar-powered house on the National Mall in Washington, D.C…. Read more

Google Flu Trends, an internet search tool that tracks the spread of influenza as an early warning of outbreaks, has expanded to Canada and 15 other countries…. Read more

A battered U.S. economy has sent many of the country’s leading minds packing for "greener" shores. America is losing thousands of top scientists, academics and biotech executives to cities like Singapore, which offer more lucrative …

Two South Korean firms have developed mini firefighting robots to help human firefighters safely plan their course of action before entering a blazing building…. Read more

Major shifts in fisheries distribution due to climate change will affect food security in tropical regions most adversely, according to a study led by the Sea Around Us Project at The University of British Columbia…. …

A growing threat for food-borne illnesses comes attractively packaged, is stunningly convenient and is increasingly popular with shoppers looking for healthy meals: ready-to-eat leafy greens that make putting together a green salad as easy as …

There is a "significant risk" that global production of conventional oil could "peak" and decline by 2020, a report suggests…. Read more

How towns and cities cause the extinction of local plants is revealed for the first time by a new analysis…. Read more

Scientists from the United States and China have revealed the potential for human stem cells to provide a vaccination against colon cancer, reports a study published in Stem Cells…. Read more

The blogger and the search engine spark separate but related controversies by reminding us that we’ve lost control of our brands, information, and ideas… Read more

A new startup called Causata, led by Paul Phillips and boasting a proven team of techies and $4.5 million in venture funding from Accel Partners, aims to push customer-intelligence technology to an unprecedented level…. Read …

A national system of vocational training reduces joblessness… Read more

Ever wonder where newspapers and blogs get some of their tantalizing tidbits? The online document-sharing service Scribd (pronounced "Scribbed") is trying to make it easier to find out. Scribd is giving away a piece of …

IPhones aren’t the only cutting-edge devices on AT&T Inc.’s wireless network. A startup is set to announce that it’s making pill-bottle caps that use Ma Bell’s network to remind you to take your medicine…. Read …

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission warns of a "looming spectrum crisis" if the government fails to find new ways to ensure there is enough bandwidth for mobile devices…. Read more

For 1200 years, the Maya dominated Central America. At their peak around 900 A.D., Maya cities teemed with more than 2,000 people per square mile — comparable to modern Los Angeles County. Even in rural …

Google has announced it has secured its first official device partner for Google PowerMeter, which means you can now use the software without having a smart meter installed by your utility company…. Read more

Once just a simple telecommunications tool, the mobile telephone has in recent years become a driver of economic growth in emerging countries, experts said at one of the industry’s biggest fairs…. Read more

Most of Australia’s top 100 listed companies lack investment plans to cope with the country’s proposed emissions reduction laws…. Read more

Some oil producing countries and big buyers are hatching a plan to move away from pricing oil in dollars—a potential blow to the greenback’s prestige… Read more

Our economy sure could use the Next Big Thing. Something on the scale of railroads, automobiles or the Internet – the kind of breakthrough that emerges every so often and builds industries, generates jobs and …

Why the Earth’s amphibians need our attention, now… Read more

When we think of nanotubes, we often think of solar panels and physical science. However, it appears that nanotubes can also provide valuable help to plants as a fertilizer. Just add carbon nanotubes, say researchers …

A new study by the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo shows the first quantitative evaluation of planetary habitability. The study identifies some potential habitats in the solar system and also shows how the habitability …

Water scarcity as a result of climate change will create far-reaching global security concerns, says Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize…. …

The next world war could take place in cyberspace, the UN telecommunications agency chief warned Tuesday as experts called for action to stamp out cyber attacks…. Read more

In an effort to build a nanoscale DNA sequencer, IBM scientists are drilling nano-sized holes in computer-like chips and passing DNA strands through them in order to read the information contained within their genetic code…. …

Although Cornell’s self-driving car didn’t win the DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007, it is alive and well and soon to become safer and more talented — it will soon be a test bed for new …

Quantum mechanics could help build ultra-high-resolution electron microscopes that won’t destroy living cells, according to MIT electrical engineers…. Read more

Smart-grid technology will bring huge savings to companies as varied as Cisco, PG&E, and Cargill, and to consumers, too. But who will foot the bill?… Read more

To expand the boundaries of machine intelligence, Ben Taskar is using television shows with large fan bases like CSI, Alias, and Lost to teach computers how to be smarter about what they see, hear and …

Exploiting quantum mechanics for transmitting information is a tantalizing possibility because it promises secure, high speed communications. Unfortunately, the fragility of methods for storing and sending quantum information has so far frustrated the enterprise. Now …

James Wannerton, 50, is one of an estimated two-and-a-half million people who suffer from gustatory auditory synaesthesia, a cross-sensory neurological condition, which means he can literally taste words…. Read more

Carbon-dioxide emissions are turning the waters of the Arctic Ocean into acid at an unprecedented rate, scientists have discovered. Research carried out in the archipelago of Svalbard has shown in many regions around the north …

You’re walking down the street, looking for a good place to eat. You hold up your cell phone and use it like the viewfinder on a camera, so the screen shows what’s in front of …

We need new leadership skills to succeed. The dilemmas we confront, the workforces we lead, the technologies we use, and our organizational lives will change sharply in the next decade. We must develop new skills …

In an O’Reilly Webcast, Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle explore their vision of where the web is heading: As we approach the six-year mark from the original Web 2.0 thesis, the trends are becoming clearer …

International climate treaties have not brought the desired results. There is growing evidence that climate change is accelerating. Average Earth temperatures are continuing to increase. Faced with the prospect that national governments will be unable …

MP3… Are you addicted to FaceBook, Myspace or Twitter? Krys Boyd explores the brave new world and influence of these networks with Harvard professor Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, Ph.D., co-author of the new book Connected: …

Printing 3D objects on the desktop. (5m 6s)

Transhumanism — called by Francis Fukuyama the world’s most dangerous idea — is a modern movement that advocates the promise and benefits of transcending our physical limitations by modifying, augmenting and supplanting human biology with …

Sony Corp. has developed a highly efficient wireless power transfer system that eliminates the use of power cables from electronic products such as television sets…. Read more

Back in 2005, Click visited Rwanda to see how the tiny African country was trying to emerge from the ravages of war and lead the region into the information age. Four years on, Dan Simmons …

The Singularity is not yet here, but its annual conference is, uniting futurists and their man-machine dreams…. Read more

A European research project that incubates self-managing internet applications is paying off. It has inspired a Wikipedia that?s better than the original and super-efficient streaming video, with more to come…. Read more

Google made its name in Web search, but successes in e-mail, maps, news aggregation, and online video show that the company is no one-trick pony. Where will the search giant go next?… Read more

A Europe-wide tax on personal or household fuel consumption was proposed on Friday as EU finance ministers met to discuss who should pay what in the fight against global warming…. Read more

UNSW researchers may have pinpointed the cause of muscle wasting and bone-density loss experienced by astronauts who fly lengthy missions under the weightless conditions of space…. Read more

Living standards in Britain and other rich countries must fall sharply over the next decade if the world is to avoid catastrophic global warming, according to a leading climate research centre…. Read more

Google Inc. is giving Web surfers a few more ways to refine their search results, signaling its resolve to ward off rival Microsoft Corp.’s campaign to lure traffic. … Read more

What insect does your country most resemble?… Read more

San Francisco is letting citizens create software tools to exploit city data for the public good…. Read more

Taiwanese researchers said they have developed hydrogen-powered mobile phone chargers, in a development that could boost the island’s efforts to become a player in green technologies. … Read more

The nation needs to give the same urgency to making sure all Americans have broadband access as the Eisenhower administration did in building an interstate highway system a half-century ago, a report concluded…. Read more

Ginkgo BioWorks aims to push synthetic biology to the factory level. … Read more

Backed by a $50 million gift from a self-made billionaire, a young MIT center is betting Third World development will come not from governments but from profit-driven entrepreneurs who use technology to create jobs…. Read …

A freak tornado and floods last month may be a harbinger of a troubled future for Brazilian farmers, who worry that climate change could severely disrupt production in one of the world’s breadbaskets…. Read more

More than half of babies born in rich nations today will live to be 100 years old if current life expectancy trends continue, according to Danish researchers…. Read more

Through a combination of nanotechnology and biotechnology, scientists may be able to eliminate disease and aging, Ray Kurzweil tells Computerworld… Read more

A new study from the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (The Neuro) of McGill University reveals that different patterns of training and learning lead to different types of memory formation…. Read more

Google’s search engine is often described as a black box thanks to the veil of secrecy the company places over the mathematical formulas that determine what results we see in response to a query. In …

As the world faces a future of increased population and decreasing landmass, sustainable technologies to boost yields have become a reality for Australian farmers…. Read more

For the better part of a century, they’ve promised us robots. From Elektro, the 7-foot metal man of the 1939 World’s Fair, to Rosie the robot maid on "The Jetsons" to the android lieutenant commander …

Canada has some of the poorest-quality broadband among advanced countries, according to a study of global internet infrastructure. … Read more

France plans to invest 1.5 billion euros (2.2 billion dollars) on infrastructure for the two million electric and hybrid cars it wants on its roads by 2020, the ecology minister said…. Read more

Web scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will use the World Wide Web to compile and share scientific data on an unprecedented scale. Their goal is to hasten scientific discovery and innovation by enabling rapid and …

Applying for EU membership has sped up reforms, and that has helped the country weather the current crisis… Read more

A clip from Beyond Tomorrow documenting research into an electronic device that can mimic the signals from spinal cords. Researchers in Johns Hopkins University mimic “central pattern generators” in the spinal cord and enable a …

Police ordered protesters to disperse at the Group of 20 summit last week with a device that can beam earsplitting alarm tones and verbal instructions that the manufacturer likens to a "spotlight of sound," but …

Engineers in Japan say they are a step closer to developing technology they hope will cut the risk of car crashes — by mimicking the behaviour of fish…. Read more

Malawi boy whose windmills could fan Africa’s destiny… Read more

Private sector, other governments will have chance for input… Read more

What if you could send an e-mail to a co-worker, text a friend or post something on Facebook confident that it would eventually self-destruct?… Read more

IBM is corralling great minds from public, private, and voluntary sectors to brainstorm ideas for building Smarter Cities…. Read more

The increasing use of smart drugs or "nootropics," to boost academic performance, could mean that exam students will face routine doping tests in future…. Read more

Google has released free software that lets website operators automatically translate online pages into any of 51 languages…. Read more