Black Friday 2008 – The war of the $199 netbook? – “While the trend towards netbooks (small, low-powered, generally linux based, laptops) has been increasing over the last year, something happened over the last week or so that has really been interesting to me…”

Touchscreen Asus Eee PC – “Asus Touchscreen Eeetop PCs
which are expected later this year has already been caught up in a video demo…”

Pterodactyl-Inspired Robot to Master Air, Ground, and Sea – “Mimicking the physical and biological characteristics of the Early Cretaceous Brazilian pterosaur Tapejara wellnhoferi — skin, blood vessels, muscles, tendons, nerves, cranial plate, skeletal structure, and more — the scientists are working to develop a Pterodrone — an unmanned aerial vehicle that not only flies but also walks and sails just like the original…”

New Solar Power Material Can Capture Every Color of the Rainbow – “Scientists have created a new material that could dramatically increase the efficiency of solar cells, by literally capturing every color of the rainbow…”

Life After the Bubble: How Japan Lost a Decade – “Is America the new Japan? Or more precisely, Japan circa 1990, just as it was staggering into its Lost Decade. As recently as six months ago, the notion that the United States would face a decade or more of Japanese-style economic malaise seemed preposterous. But after the last few weeks of financial turmoil and political ineptitude, you could almost argue that America would be fortunate to end up with a downturn akin to Japan’s. That’s because in several key ways, Japan was much better equipped to withstand its financial lashing in the 1990s than Americans are today…”

More problems with Hubble – “Two anomalies onboard the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, which stopped transmitting data on September 27, caused engineers to suspend re-activation of Hubble’s science equipment. Engineers encountered problems following an intricate maneuver to circumvent a piece of failed hardware. Hubble is currently orbiting Earth in a dormant “safe mode” while the malfunctions are assessed…”

9 Examples of Apocalyptic Extinction-Level Events – “Sure it sounds crazy, but extinction-level, apocalyptic events have happened, and they could happen again…”

CERN releases preliminary failure analysis – “The mammoth Large Hadron Collider is offline after a pretty big malfunction during testing. CERN, the agency in charge of the LHC, has released its preliminary findings of what happened…”

Have Traces of Cosmic Strings Been Found? Scientists Says “Yes” – “A controversial study indicates that there are traces of vast cosmic strings left over in radiation from the early universe. If indeed confirmed to be real, these cosmic strings would offer an unprecedented window into the extreme physics of origins of the universe…”

Mountain Climbers in Danger of Brain Damage – “Italian researchers suggest mountain climbers suffer from subtle brain damage. This has been concluded on the basis of ‘before’ and ‘after’ studies conducted on nine male climbers…”

Antidepressant Studies Unpublished – “The makers of antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil never published the results of about a third of the drug trials that they conducted to win government approval, misleading doctors and consumers about the drugs’ true effectiveness, a new analysis has found…”

10 Hypnotic Gadgets You Just Can’t Stop Looking At – “10 gadgets that you can use to hypnotize yourself until quittin’ time. All you need to do is stare at the mesmerizing movement…”

[See previous IR]