Week of Sun, 2006-10-15 00:00 to Sat, 2006-10-21 23:59

The worldwide mobile phone market took another step towards reaching one billion units shipped for the year, with a total of 254.9 million units shipped in the third quarter of 2006. According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, worldwide shipments of mobile phones were up 7.9% from the previous quarter and up an impressive 21.0% from the same quarter a year ago.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation on today announced plans to build the emerging field of digital media and learning, committing $50 million over five years to the effort. Research at the USC Annenberg Center for Communication is being funded as part of the initiative, and was highlighted at a New York news conference.

In the build-up to the announcement, MacArthur earlier funded exploratory grants in the field of digital media and learning, in 2005 awarding a $3.3 million, three-year grant to Mizuko "Mimi" Ito, a Research Scientist at the USC Annenberg Center for Communication and colleagues Peter Lyman, Michael Carter, and Diane Harley at the University of California at Berkeley.

To web surfers, 'George' is a bald, spectacled and slightly androgynous-looking 39-year-old, who claims to be a computer programmer. But to his creators, this quirky chat robot, or 'chatbot', represents an enormously promising future for artificial-intelligence avatars on the internet. And IST research played its part.

Powered by award-winning artificial intelligence (AI) that was developed by British programmer Rollo Carpenter, 'George' the avatar has a 3D appearance, a variety of facial expressions and the ability to understand and respond to others using human speech. He is the product of groundbreaking work by British firm Televirtual, a leading developer of virtual-reality control systems for animated content.

Honda Aircraft Company announced that it received well over 100 individual customer orders with deposits for the $3.65 million HondaJet during the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) convention in Orlando, Florida. The company began sales of its advanced light jet on October 17 and has experienced demand in excess of expectations over three days of sales.

Using fast digital imaging, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, together with researchers from Collège de France, have succeeded in developing two different protocols by which one can initiate the fusion process in a controlled manner and observe the subsequent fusion dynamics with a temporal resolution in the microsecond regime. For both protocols, the opening of the fusion necks was found to be very fast, with an average expansion velocity of centimetres per second. This velocity indicates that the initial formation of a single fusion neck can be completed in a few hundred nanoseconds. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 103, 15841-15846, October 24, 2006).

Researchers at the University of South Florida’s Center for Urban Transportation Research and Department of Computer Science and Engineering are working on cell phone applications that can help keep you safer, tell you when to evacuate from a hurricane and even let you help law enforcement prevent or solve crimes.

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. will showcase its full range of electric vehicle capabilities at this year's 22nd International Battery, Hybrid and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle Symposium & Exposition or better known as EVS22. The EVS22 is the world's largest international symposium dedicated to electric vehicles and technology, and is scheduled from October 23 through 28 at the Pacifico Yokohama.

If you think the world is on the verge of running out of oil or other mineral resources, you've been taken in by the foremost of seven myths about resource geology, according to a University of Washington economic geologist.

"The most common question I get is, 'When are we going to run out of oil.' The correct response is, 'Never,'" said Eric Cheney. "It might be a heck of a lot more expensive than it is now, but there will always be some oil available at a price, perhaps $10 to $100 a gallon."

Engineers at the California Institute of Technology have invented an ingenious new method for depositing tiny amounts of materials on surfaces. The researchers say that the technique, known as plasmon-assisted chemical vapor deposition, will add a powerful new tool to the existing battery of techniques used to construct microdevices.

In the current issue of the journal Nano Letters, research scientist David Boyd and his colleagues at Caltech, Stanford University, and New York University report that the new vapor deposition process can be used with a variety of materials by focusing a low-powered laser beam onto a substrate coated with gold nanoparticles. The laser wavelength is chosen to match a natural resonance in the gold particles, and those particles in the small spot illuminated by the laser (about one micron in diameter, or less than a hundredth the diameter of a human hair) absorb energy from the laser and quickly heat up, rising in temperature several hundred degrees.

Lockheed Martin rolled out the first combat-capable F-22 Raptor Oct. 16 destined for basing and operations in the Pacific Rim.

Raptor 5087 completed its final assembly, with Air Force leaders from Alaska and Lockheed Martin employees on hand to mark the event outside the production line in Marietta.

"Today's F-22 roll out marks another significant milestone for the F-22 program," said Nick Cessario, vice president and F-22 program deputy general manager. "The Raptor industrial team is proud to continue to produce this revolutionary 5th generation stealth fighter for the United States Air Force."

Adobe Systems Incorporated has acquired Serious Magic Inc.™, maker of video software and communications tools.

Adobe plans to continue to sell Serious Magic's products and future versions of Adobe's video solutions will include Serious Magic technologies and software. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

On 19 October 2006, United States District Court Judge Charles P. Kocoras, presiding over the e360Insight v. The Spamhaus Project matter in the Northern District of Illinois, issued an order denying e360Insight's ("e360") motion asking the Court to, among other things, suspend www.spamhaus.org. The Court explained that the relief e360 sought was too broad to be warranted under the circumstances. First, the Court noted that since there is no indication that ICANN or Tucows acted in concert with Spamhaus, the Court could not conclude that either party could be brought within the ambit of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(d), which states that an order granting an injunction is "binding only upon the parties to the action, their officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, and upon those persons in active concert or participation with them." Second, the Court stated that a suspension of www.spamhaus.org would cut off all lawful online activities of Spamhaus, not just those that are in contravention of the injunction the Court previously issued against Spamhaus.

Toshiba Corporation completed its acquisition of BNFL USA Group Inc. and Westinghouse UK Limited (collectively Westinghouse), following completion of the final arrangements with British Nuclear Fuels Limited on October 16, US Eastern Standard Time. Westinghouse Electric Company is now a Toshiba Corporation consolidated group company.

Toshiba established two holding companies in the U.S. and the U.K., Toshiba Nuclear Energy Holdings (US) Inc. and Toshiba Nuclear Energy Holdings (UK) Limited, to carry out the acquisition. Through these holding companies, Toshiba has invested US4,158 million dollars in acquiring a 77 percent share of Westinghouse, giving Toshiba management control of the company. The remaining 23% is held by two strategic partner companies: the Shaw Group Inc. of the USA invested US1,080 million dollars in a 20% stake, while Japan’s Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. (IHI) invested US162 million dollars in a 3% stake. Toshiba discussed capital participation with potential partners in terms of mutual understanding of long-term business strategy, a shared market vision, and complementary relations and maximized synergies in conducting business. Toshiba continues discussions with several potential partners.

A team led by scientists at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering has demonstrated the first working "invisibility cloak." The cloak deflects microwave beams so they flow around a "hidden" object inside with little distortion, making it appear almost as if nothing were there at all.

Cloaks that render objects essentially invisible to microwaves could have a variety of wireless communications or radar applications, according to the researchers.

An interdisciplinary team of scientists from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and UC Berkeley's College of Engineering has secured a prestigious federal grant from the National Institutes of Health Roadmap for Medical Research initiative aimed at improving nanomedical research. Their discoveries could enhance methods of curing diseases like cancer as well as viral infections at the molecular scale.

NEC LCD Technologies, Ltd. have successfully developed four new system-on-glass (SOG) liquid crystal display (LCD) modules, suitable for personal digital assistants (PDAs) and portable GPS terminals. Successful mass production trials for low temperature poly-silicon (LTPS) thin-film-transistor (TFT) color liquid crystal display modules began at NEC Akita, Ltd. on October 1.

OASIS members have approved DocBook version 4.5 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. Widely adopted by technical writers since its introduction in 1991, DocBook provides an XML markup vocabulary for authoring and exchange of prose content, especially technical documentation.

At the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) convention, GE Honda Aero Engines has signed business agreements to power two new business jets: the Spectrum “Freedom” and the HondaJet.

GE Honda Aero Engines, a 50/50 joint company created in 2004 by General Electric Company (GE) and Honda, has been engaged in aggressive development and component testing for its new HF120 jet engine, with the first engine scheduled to run in early 2007.

The Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate has awarded a $6,462,270 contract to HNC Software LLC, Advanced Technologies Group, of San Diego for research to improve the capabilities of U.S. intelligence analysts around the world.

Under the 52-month award, HNC will develop, test, demonstrate and deliver key software components of a vision for machine cognition technology capable of autonomous organization and reasoning of data from sources such as text, images and video.

IMEC developed a reconfigurable processor for video decoding achieving power efficiencies 6 to 12 times higher than state-of-the-art C-programmed processors. The processor was derived from IMEC’s C-programmable ADRES (Architecture for Dynamically Reconfigurable Embedded Systems) using its corresponding compiler. It proves that ADRES and its compiler are very well suited for time efficient integration in future low-power portable wireless multimedia devices.

Recent advances in computer and imaging technology allow the scanning of tens of thousands of genes and proteins in little more than a blink of an eye. This high speed technology has already produced advances in the understanding of disease, including lung disease, and the already blistering pace is picking up.

To take stock of this quickly changing field, scientists and doctors will gather at The American Physiological Society meeting, "Physiological genomics and proteomics of lung disease," to be held Nov. 2-5 in Fort Lauderdale.

Nokia Reports Third Quarter 2006

Nokia's third quarter 2006 net sales increased 20% to EUR 10.1 billion, compared with EUR 8.4 billion in the third quarter 2005. At constant currency, group net sales would have increased 18%.

Nokia's third quarter 2006 operating profit decreased 4% to EUR 1 100 million (including the negative impact of EUR 128 million in special items), compared with EUR 1 149 million in the third quarter 2005 (including the positive impact of EUR 87 million in special items). Nokia's third quarter 2006 operating margin was 10.9% (13.7%), including the impact of the respective special items, and 12.2% (12.6%) excluding the special items.

Total European IT spending on computer and communications equipment, software, IT services and outsourcing, and IT staff is still lower than in the US, according to a forecast out today by Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR). Despite a greater collective GDP for Western and Central European countries than for the US, Forrester estimates IT spending for Europe at $565 billion in 2006 (€448 billion) compared with $721 billion in the US. However, Forrester reports that growth in European IT spending is now starting to match or exceed US IT spending. In US dollars, European IT spending will grow by 5.1% in 2006 – almost as high as the US growth of 5.8% – before slowing to 3.7% in 2007, in parallel with the US IT spending slowdown to 2.9%. Forrester predicts that new investment in computer and communications equipment and software will grow by almost 4.5% in 2007 after 2.1% growth in 2006, due to cautious European CIO spending plans this year.

In the future, new customers of the pay-TV broadcaster Premiere will be able to receive the latest movies with even more security. The receiver required for program reception will be fitted with an RFID chip enabling its entire delivery route to be tracked - from production in Asia right through to delivery at the customer's front door. The solution is the result of a joint effort by Siemens Business Services and the logistics service provider Fiege Group. Every day, around 4,000 new TVs are equipped with the radio frequency identification tags.

James Bowden, project leader for the single-channel ground and airborne radio system, said recent media articles claim that Hezbollah used advanced technology to crack Israeli communications during the fighting in Lebanon.

The articles allege that the group used technology from Iran to thwart Israeli tank attacks, Bowden said, adding that some servicemembers have expressed the fear that Hezbollah or Iran has shared this technology with extremists in Iraq.

The International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON) issued a comprehensive review of existing efforts to develop "best practices" for handling nanomaterials in the workplace. The report can be found at http://icon.rice.edu . The work was performed by researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) as part of a two-phase project to catalogue how industry is managing the potential occupational safety risks posed by nanomaterials.

DataPath, Inc. signed an agreement to acquire all of the stock of Industrial Logic Corporation (ILC) for $21 million in cash. ILC is a privately-held Atlanta-based provider of network management software for monitoring, controlling and automating hybrid communications networks. ILC generated revenues of $12 million in 2005.

The transaction is subject to certain closing conditions, and is anticipated to close within 45 days. The acquisition would support DataPath’s strategy to expand its software solutions.

Superconducting wires are used in magnetic resonance imaging machines, high-speed magnetic-levitation trains, and in sensitive devices that detect variations in the magnetic field of a brain. Eventually, ultra-narrow superconducting wires might be used in power lines designed to carry electrical energy long distances with little loss.

Motorola, Inc. reported sales, on a continuing operations basis, of $10.6 billion in the third quarter of 2006. Net earnings in the third quarter of 2006 were $0.39 per share, including $0.10 per share from discontinued operations and $0.29 per share from continuing operations.

During the quarter, the company continued to maintain a very strong balance sheet, generating operating cash flow from continuing operations of $1.6 billion, its 23rd consecutive quarter of positive operating cash flow. In addition, the company repurchased 62 million shares of its stock for $1.5 billion.

An intelligent flood monitoring system that could give advance warning of the type of rapid flood that engulfed the UK Cornish village of Boscastle in 2004, is under test in the Yorkshire Dales. Danny Hughes, Phil Greenwood and colleagues from Lancaster University won an award for their paper describing the system at the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting in Nottingham last month.

Smart homes have been talked about for decades, but beyond a few concept houses and a few gadget-happy homeowners, little has been achieved in making them a bricks-and-mortar reality. The TEAHA project team plans to enable all of us to call our house and tell it to start the laundry, fill the bath or crank up the heating.

Nokia and the Russian operator Megafon have successfully tested data transmission at 3.6 Mbps speed using High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) technology. The test zone deployed by Nokia at one of Megafon sites in Saint Petersburg allows the testing of all new capabilities of 3G networks.

Nokia network equipment was used in the live tests, including several base stations, radio network controller and 3G core network equipment.

Yahoo! Third Quarter 2006 Financial Results

• Revenues were $1,580 million for the third quarter of 2006, a 19 percent increase compared to $1,330 million for the same period of 2005.
o Marketing services revenue was $1,370 million for the third quarter of 2006, an 18 percent
increase compared to $1,160 million for the same period of 2005.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has issued the final order approving the arrangement, between Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. and ATI Technologies Inc., under which all of ATI’s outstanding common shares will be acquired by an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of AMD. The proposed acquisition, announced on July 24, 2006, is expected to be completed during the week of October 23, subject to satisfaction or waiver of customary closing conditions.

A team of Yale biomedical engineers and cell biologists received a $1-million award from the National Science Foundation to develop “smart nanoparticles” for the delivery of vaccines.

Led by Tarek Fahmy, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, the team will apply the two-year, Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team (NIRT) funding to develop a new class of nanomaterials with properties that mimic biological vectors like bacteria and viruses.

Honda Aircraft Company, Inc. began sales of the HondaJet at the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) convention with the announcement of the price, production specifications and a sales and service network for its advanced light jet. Scheduled to go into production in the U.S. in 2010, pricing is set at $3.65 million for HondaJet in its standard configuration.

Telkonet, Inc. and EarthLink have agreed to test broadband over power line access and Internet voice service in nine apartment complexes located in the Washington, D.C. area using Telkonet's powerline backbone.

Under the terms of the agreement, Telkonet's iWire System™ will be the platform used to enable high-speed Internet and data access to EarthLink as part of a voice and broadband Internet and home networking package that includes features such as caller ID, voicemail and three-way calling bundled with high-speed Internet access. EarthLink will market its services to apartment residents in the D.C. metro area.

High-quality content from a cartoon network, owned by Turner Broadcasting, is being made available for downloading through the Nokia Content Discoverer client, embedded in millions of Nokia devices.

Under a multi-country agreement between the companies, mobile subscribers will be able to browse, download and purchase over-the-air Cartoon Network games, video clips, and other content from a dedicated Cartoon Network mobile content "storefront".

Intel Corporation announced that it will encourage networking companies to benefit from a key server data input and output acceleration technology designed and added to its server product lines earlier this year.

A component of Intel® I/OAT (Intel® Input/Output Acceleration Technology), Intel® QuickData Technology is a data acceleration engine that enables other networking and server vendors to increase the throughput of server data traffic. Key supporters of Intel QuickData Technology include Broadcom, Fujitsu-Siemens, IBM, Mellanox, Microsoft and VMware.

An Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate science and engineering team has made a significant breakthrough in its hypersonic computational research, which could lead to new warhead technologies.

Funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research here, the team is studying the aerodynamic characteristics of projectiles that deform at hypersonic speeds at sea-level conditions, which is a high-speed flight regime not commonly studied.

If next-generation robotics and nanoscale technologies are to become a reality, they are likely to need the resources of distributed processing systems with self-organising, life-like properties. Yet the gap between present-day processing systems and living organisms remains a formidable one.

And it is reducing this gap between the binary and the living world that is the focus for the PACE project. The participants in this IST initiative, which ends in March 2008, hope to create the foundation for a new generation of embedded information-technology systems using programmable, self-assembling artificial cells.

IBM reported third-quarter 2006 diluted earnings of $1.45 per share from continuing operations, an increase of 54 percent as reported, compared with diluted earnings of $.94 per share in the third quarter of 2005; the third-quarter 2005 diluted earnings include $.32 per share for a one-time charge of $525 million for taxes in connection with the 2005 repatriation of foreign earnings. Diluted earnings per share for the third-quarter 2006 grew 15 percent compared with the year-ago quarter of $1.26 per diluted share, without the one-time per share charge.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the 2007 Fuel Economy Guide to help consumers make well-informed choices when purchasing new vehicles.

Data show that hybrid vehicles continue to lead the government's fuel economy ratings. This year's Toyota Prius, Honda Civic, Toyota Camry Hybrid and Ford Escape Hybrid FWD models top the list. Hybrid technology can be effectively used to improve fuel economy, as other models leading the list include the Toyota Yaris, Honda Fit, Toyota Corolla, Hyundai Accent, Kia Rio, Ford Escape 4WD Hybrid and Mercury Mariner Hybrid 4WD.

Yellow Dog Linux v5.0, Terra Soft's next generation Linux operating system will support the Sony PLAYSTATION®3. Through an aggressive, rapid co-development project conducted by Carsten Haitzler and the Enlightenment development team, Yellow Dog Linux v5.0, built upon Fedora Core 5, now integrates the next generation "E17" desktop in order to provide an unprecedented level of function and interface aesthetic. Designed for users of all ages and all levels of experience, Yellow Dog Linux v5.0 is Terra Soft's most advanced distribution to date.

Legal actions against thousands of music file-sharers across the world were announced today as the recording industry stepped up its campaign to deter copyright theft and promote legitimate use of music on the internet.

Over 8,000 new cases in 17 countries are being announced today, including the first ever cases against illegal file-sharing in the two biggest markets of South America and in Eastern Europe. A total of more than 13,000 legal actions have now been taken outside the United States.

Is spending too much time online a prevalent and damaging condition, or simply a bad habit among a select few? Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have taken an important step toward resolving the debate over whether compulsive use of the Internet merits a medical diagnosis.

In a first-of-its-kind, telephone-based study, the researchers found that more than one out of eight Americans exhibited at least one possible sign of problematic Internet use. The findings follow results from previous, less rigorous studies that found a significant number of the population could be suffering from some form of Internet addiction.

Firefox 2 Release Candidate 3 (RC 3), the preview release of the next version of the Firefox browser, is now available for download. Web application developers, our testing community, and users who want to get a sneak peek at the next version of Firefox should download and install this release candidate. Please note that at this time, users should not expect all of their extensions, plugins, and themes from previous versions of Firefox to work properly. The release notes have a detailed list of what’s new in Firefox 2 RC 3.

RTLinuxPro is shipping in the just released Gen4 EFIS/One glass cockpit from Blue Mountain Avionics. The EFIS/One is a state-of-the-art, complete glass cockpit designed specifically for experimental aircraft. FSMLabs RTLinuxPro combines a ruggedized embedded Linux with the RTCore hard real-time operating system and everything else necessary to deploy a device.

Semiconductor technology leaders have identified the top five critical issues for extending breakthrough imaging process toward the 32 nm technology generation.

Meeting recently at the 3rd International Symposium on Immersion Lithography—sponsored by Selete and SEMATECH in cooperation with IMEC—nearly 400 technologists heard presentations showing that 193 nm immersion (193i) lithography is on track for volume manufacturing at sub-65 nm half-pitch, and might be extensible below 40 nm half-pitch with techniques using high refractive index fluids and very high numerical aperture (NA).

Centralized storage caching, a unique innovation for the data center, from Gear6. The appliance-based solution closes the performance gap created by decades of server and CPU advances that have left disk data access-a mechanical process-far behind. The Gear6 solution provides unmatched I/O throughput, reduces disk access time from milliseconds to microseconds, and scales to terabytes of capacity. This new approach complements existing NAS/NFS deployments and installs transparently in the data center without requiring changes to current applications or infrastructure. Gear6 centralized caching solutions deliver dramatic performance benefits, reduce the need to over-provision storage, and provide protection from peak load disruptions.

HP today announced its researchers have created a radio frequency identification (RFID) asset tracking technology for data centers and successfully tested it at a major retailer.

The technology was developed by HP Labs, the company’s central research facility, and tested at Meijer Inc., a retailer with more than 170 grocery and specialty stores in the midwestern United States. The solution could automatically monitor data center assets, providing real-time tracking and auditing of servers, networking equipment, server and storage enclosures and other technology using RFID.

Testing soldiers to see if they have been exposed to biological or chemical weapons could soon be much faster and easier, thanks to MIT researchers who are helping to develop a tiny diagnostic device that could be carried into battle.

By tweaking the design of a tiny pump, researchers affiliated with MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies have taken a major step towards making an existing miniature "lab on a chip" fully portable, so the tiny device can perform hundreds of chemical experiments in any setting.

Ford Motor Company, BP and the City of Taylor today marked an important milestone in their collective path towards the use of hydrogen as viable alternative fuel for the future, opening a new hydrogen station that will fuel a fleet of Ford Focus fuel cell vehicles.

Research into hydrogen, including partnering to begin to build an infrastructure, is part of Ford's overall efforts to address the challenges of climate change and energy independence. Ford is moving ahead with a range of technological solutions simultaneously, including vehicles such as the Ford Escape Hybrid and Mercury Mariner Hybrid, hydrogen fuel cells, hydrogen internal combustion engines, ethanol, clean diesel and refinements to gasoline based powertrains and advanced transmissions. Some of the technologies represent near term solutions. Others, such as hydrogen, must be viewed as long term options.

Proteins keep cells humming. Some are enzymes that taxi electrons to chemicals outside the cell, to discharge excess energy generated during metabolism. This maintains energy flow in the cell and, in turn, keeps the cell alive.

The process has worked a little like that slogan for a hyper-electrified desert gambling town: What happens in the cellular environs stays there.

Virtualization format technology, from Microsoft Corp., will now be available under its Open Specification Promise (OSP), an irrevocable promise from Microsoft to every individual and organization in the world to make use of this patented technology for free, now and forever when implementing specified open standards. Microsoft first announced the availability of an OSP for Web services specifications in September 2006 and now is expanding its customer-focused commitment to interoperability by applying the OSP to Microsoft’s Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) Image Format specification.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have made the first confirmed "spintronic" device incorporating organic molecules, a potentially superior approach for innovative electronics that rely on the spin, and associated magnetic orientation, of electrons. The physicists created a nanoscale test structure to obtain clear evidence of the presence and action of specific molecules and magnetic switching behavior.

Micron will showcase its portfolio of DigitalClarity™ image sensors for automotive applications at the Convergence 2006 automotive electronics conference and exhibition in Detroit.

Micron has a portfolio of dedicated automotive image sensors that were designed specifically to meet the stringent performance requirements for today’s evolving “smart car.”

The NEC Corporation initiated patent infringement litigation against Italian digital microwave radio (DMR) manufacturer SIAE Microelettronica S.p.A. (SIAE) in the Italian District Court of Milan on October 16, 2006. NEC alleges that DMR equipment manufactured and sold by SIAE infringes European patents owned by it.

NEC determined that litigation was unavoidable in order to protect its intellectual property rights and initiated patent infringement litigation against SIAE in the German District Court of Munich I half a year ago. NEC has now also initiated patent infringement litigation in Milan, where SIAE has its headquarters.

From a butterfly’s iridescent wing to a gecko’s sticky foot, nature derives extraordinary properties from ordinary materials like wax and keratin. Its secret is hierarchical topology: macroscale structures assembled from microscale components of varying sizes. Borrowing a page from nature’s playbook, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a novel platform for the self-assembly of experimental hierarchical surfaces in a fluid. Their work offers diverse industries a new way to generate and measure self-assembly at the nano-scale.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Singapore Media Development Authority have announced an agreement to establish the Singapore-MIT International Game Lab (SMIGL). The pioneering collaboration aims to further digital game research globally, develop world-class academic programs in game technology, and establish Singapore as a vital node in the international game industry.

The directors of MIT's Comparative Media Studies Program (CMS) -- Henry Jenkins, DeFlorez Professor of Humanities, and William Uricchio, professor of comparative media studies -- will co-direct SMIGL, which will have offices both in Singapore and at MIT. Jenkins and Uricchio will serve as the leading principal investigators in the collaboration.

By developing novel methods to map and model the internet, even visualising it as a jellyfish, the EVERGROW project is challenging conventional thinking and offering new insights into how best to route future network traffic.

Sooner than we think, networks will be providing us with access to all the world's knowledge. Not only that, but our entire society could be network-based, from industry and government to our private lives. The demand on future networks, especially the most open one of all, the internet, will be very high. Will they be able to cope?

The worldwide virtual machine software (VMS) market grew to $560 million in 2005, a robust 67% growth over the previous year and topping the 63% year-over-year growth recorded in 2004.

EMC/VMware was the top VMS vendor in 2005, with a market share of over 55%. IDC believes that EMC's ability to support many operating environments concurrently on industry-standard systems, reinforced by partnerships or alliances with almost every leading hardware supplier, contributed to that performance.

exportIP, from Black Duck Software, a software compliance platform that helps ensure software products do not violate government restrictions regarding encryption export. The United States has established rules governing the strength of encryption algorithms that can be exported internationally, and it imposes significant penalties for companies who violate those rules.

Honda Motor Co., Ltd. has developed a new system that combines steering assistance with voice guidance to help make parking easier. The new Honda Parking Assist System was made available on the Honda Life, released in Japan on October 5, 2006.

The key to trouble-free parking is to stop the vehicle at the optimal location from which to reverse into the parking space and then turn the steering wheel to the appropriate angle for backing up. The Smart Parking System helps make this easier by providing automatic steering assist along a preset path to guide the driver to the optimal position from which to start backing into the parking space. The driver then follows the instructions from the audio guidance system, executing parallel or back-in parking without the need for any complex maneuvering. Thanks to its simple configuration, the system does not require a video monitor.

ASU scientists Rudy Diaz and Stuart Lindsay will lead a research group on a three-year, $1.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation for an innovative project designed to break through the current technological hurdles of solar energy.

Today's solar panels, made up of thousands of individual solar cells, are extremely inefficient and costly to produce, limiting Sunbelt states like Arizona from fully utilizing its most abundant renewable energy resource.

Cingular Wireless and Symbian Limited today launched an early access support program to promote and accelerate application development for phones based on Symbian OS version 9. Cingular Deluxe and Corporate Deluxe developers are offered complimentary Symbian Affiliate status, providing early and free access to Symbian reference materials. Cingular has also joined the Symbian Platinum Partner Program, enabling Cingular employees access to exclusive program benefits.

McAfee, Inc. has acquired Onigma Ltd for $20 million in cash. Onigma is a privately-held provider of data protection solutions that monitor, report and prevent confidential data from leaving the enterprise.

Through the acquisition of Onigma's content-based data loss prevention (DLP) product, McAfee® is announcing its host-based data loss prevention solution called McAfee Data Loss Prevention. It will help protect enterprises from the risk associated with unauthorized transfer of data from within or outside of the organization.

Researchers say that they have developed a DNA-based computer that could lead to faster, more accurate tests for diagnosing West Nile Virus and bird flu. Representing the first "medium-scale integrated molecular circuit," it is the most powerful computing device of its type to date, they say.

The new technology could be used in the future, perhaps in 5 to 10 years, to develop instruments that can simultaneously diagnose and treat cancer, diabetes or other diseases, according to a team of scientists at Columbia University Medical Center in New York and the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Their study is scheduled to appear in the November issue of the American Chemical Society's Nano Letters, a monthly peer-reviewed journal.

The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) has revealed its design guidelines, for the first time, will now address vital link protection issues. The DLNA Link Protection Guidelines build upon the current DLNA Network Device Interoperability Guidelines used by manufacturers of DLNA CERTIFIED™ personal computing (PC), consumer electronics (CE) and mobile devices.

The thwarted 2006 London airline bomb plot not only heightened summer travel fears and created new passenger screening inconveniences, but also greatly underscored the urgent need for improved national security measures.

Now, professor Joe Wang, director of the Center for Biosensors and Bioelectronics at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, has developed a highly sensitive technology to rapidly detect liquid peroxide explosives in as little as 15 seconds. The results are published as a research communication online in this week's edition of the leading international analytical journal, The Analyst (www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/an/Article.asp?Type=AdvArticle).

Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD), the cleaner fuel is available for both consumers and industrial customers at the pump. The clean-burning fuel - with 97 percent less sulfur than the replaced formulations - is part of a clean air strategy that also requires new engine technology. Together, the new fuel and engine technology will result in cleaner air and help prevent nearly 20,000 premature deaths and tens of thousands of cases of respiratory ailments such as bronchitis and asthma across the nation.

Nokia announced the winners in the Forum Nokia S60 3rd Edition Challenge global developer competition, awarding €100,000 in grand prizes to mobile applications developers for the best new applications based on the S60 3rd Edition.

The winners announced today in each of the four categories will receive a €25,000 top prize and a one-year free membership in Forum Nokia PRO, an exclusive developer support program, valued at €4,000**. Top winners in each of the four categories also receive a demo spot at NokiaWorld 2006, free on-site technical support and consultancy, devices and additional marketing support from Nokia affiliate, Handango.

The OCTEON™ Multi-core MIPS64® Processor family, from Cavium Networks.

The 1 Gigahertz OCTEON™ Plus family doubles the performance of the OCTEON CN38XX through higher frequency and architectural enhancements, and adds key new features, while maintaining full software and pin compatibility. OCTEON Plus processors also include power management techniques that deliver up to 2X higher performance in the same power budget to set new performance per watt records.

Aruba Networks deployed its Mobile Edge solution at The Ohio State University in what is believed to be the world's largest wireless LAN to date. When the rollout is complete, the Aruba wireless network will cover Ohio State University's main campus-which comprises over 400 buildings and 25 million square feet, sitting on approximately 1,700 acres. The Aruba network will provide ubiquitous wireless access to the university's student population of over 50,000, in addition to over 27,000 faculty and staff. Ohio State has estimated that over 3,000 Access Points (APs) are required for minimal coverage-and up to 10,000 APs may be required for optimal coverage, along with over 40 mobility controllers distributed across their three core router points of presence (POPs).

NASA has said it over and over again: The coming missions to finish the International Space Station are among the hardest and most complex ever.

But if you ask the astronauts and engineers which of the final 14 assembly flights may be the most complex, many would point to Discovery's next mission, set to launch in December.

With Europe's population ageing rapidly and the demand for healthcare growing, healthcare services need to become more efficient. However, little hard evidence is available on the contribution of eHealth solutions. Now one EU project, eHealth Impact, has demonstrated that eHealth can provide enormous benefits – if the technology is properly implemented.

An innovative process that converts low-energy longwave photons (light particles) into higher-energy shortwave photons has been developed by a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz and at the Sony Materials Science Laboratory in Stuttgart. With the skillful combination of two light-active substances, the scientists have, for the first time, manipulated normal light, such as sunlight, to combine the energy in photons with particular wavelengths (Physical Review Letters, October 4, 2006). This has previously only been achieved with a similar process using high-energy density laser light. The successful outcome of this process could lay the foundation for a new generation of more efficient solar cells.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is the eighth library to join the Google Books Library Project.

The combined library collections of UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Historical Society comprise one of the largest collections of documents and historical materials to be found in the United States. The collections are ranked 11th in North America by the Association of Research Libraries in Washington, D.C.

BT is taking a pioneering role in the global battle against spam by implementing the world’s first fully-automated ‘spam buster’ system to track down and tackle professional spammers and ‘botnet’-infected customers on the BT broadband network.

Around 80 per cent of e-mails on the internet, equivalent to 6.5 billion emails a day, are spam. These unwanted emails are not only generated by professional spammers, but also by ‘botnets’ - where the PCs of unsuspecting customers are secretly infected with rogue software to form a robotic network that generates vast quantities of unwanted spam . These compromised machines can be used in turn to attack other PCs and websites.

A higher-than-expected percentage of Internet users are likely to fall victim to scam artists masquerading as trusted service providers, report researchers at the Indiana University School of Informatics.

"Designing Ethical Phishing Experiments: A Study of eBay Query Features" simulated "phishing" tactics used to elicit online information from eBay customers. The online auction giant was selected because of its popularity among millions of users -- and because it is one of the most popular targets of phishing scams.

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) have been under intense study by scientists all over the world for more than a decade and are being thought of as ideal building blocks for nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS). A type of one-dimensional structure with high-aspect ratio, carbon nanotubes have emerged as a promising material because of their many impressive mechanical, electrical and chemical properties.

Now scientists from Northwestern University have demonstrated a novel carbon nanotube-based nanoelectromechanical switch exhibiting bistability based on current tunneling. The device could help advance technological developments in memory chips and electronic sensing devices.

Jahshaka 2.0 is available now for immediate download! This latest version of the software includes a host of critical updates. This latest version is a rock-solid version of Jahshaka to date and represents an important milestone in our development!

Jahplayer 0.1.0, a professional grade media player capable of playing uncompressed video and image sequences at resolutions as high as 2K and 4K in real-time and featuring image analysis tools and basic editorial function, is also available for download! Jahplayer 0.1.0 is based on entirely new source code that will serve as the basis for Jahshaka 3.0 and is Python-based which facilitates scripting.

PostX is a private sector solution adopted by the Department of Defense (DoD) for the enablement of absentee voting by US Armed Forces and others wherever they may be stationed around the world. Until now, the mobile nature and the limited time availability typical of soldiers abroad have challenged them when exercising their right to vote as they've been bound by the limitations of the mail system for requesting and receiving voter ballots. Now, the entire ballot registration, ordering and receiving process is being securely automated through the Web and email from computer or mobile devices anywhere, anytime.