5:56 PM
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20100521_7217.php?oref=topstory
Oregon State researchers made an important fundamental advance in robotics that should lead toward robots that can walk and run effectively while using little energy in the process. This could lead to robots taking on dangerous military missions, making prosthetic limbs for humans work better, or even enable people in wheelchairs to gain "walking" abilities:
http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2010/may/advances-made-walking-running-robots
Air Force scramjet set a record for hypersonic flight by flying for more than 3 minutes at Mach 6:
http://www.rdmag.com/News/2010/05/Industries-Aerospace-Air-Force-scramjet-breaks-record-for-hypersonic-flight/
Several days *before* the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, BP officials chose to use a type of casing for the well that they knew was the riskier of two options...the problems that they knew could happen *actually happened* and helped lead to the explosion, but they chose the riskier option in part because it was cheaper:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/us/27rig.html
Each year there are 76 million cases of food-related illnesses in the US. Sanitation tests found that a weak link if our food chain are the wooden or plastic pallets that transport almost everything we eat from the farm to stores and everywhere in between. 33% of the wooden pallets tested showed signs of unsanitary conditions where bacteria could easily grow, with 10% testing positive for E. coli (which causes food poisoning) and 2.9% tested positive for listeria (20% to 30% fatality rate!):
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/26/earlyshow/contributors/susankoeppen/main6520676.shtml
Inventors are trying to commercialize a breakthrough device that would use the sun to break water into hydrogen and oxygen, saving the oxygen for medical uses and using the hydrogen to power fuels cells that provide the energy to run the water purification system. So, it could be a fully self-contained device that could generate clean water anywhere in the world:
http://www.rdmag.com/New-To-Market/2010/05/Environment-Green-Technology-Device-makes-produces-clean-water-through-sunlight-and-fuel-cells/
Northrop set a new electronics performance record with an integrated circuit operating at 0.67 terahertz (more than twice as fast as the previous fastest IC):
http://www.irconnect.com/noc/press/pages/news_releases.html?d=192929
Australian science agency CSIRO is back to suing over its WiFi paents--they got Microsoft, HP, Dell, Intel, and Toshiba to settle with them last year ($205 million royalties last year), and now they are going to sue Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile USA:
http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2010/05/26/us-cellcos-csiros-patents-firing.htm
Apple's market capitalization now makes it the most valuable tech company, passing Microsoft:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=amSMuVekNDwk
Apple has 70% of digital music sales, but the biggest gains were made by Amazon. Amazon also has now caught up to WalMart for the #2 spot for music retailers:
http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/press-releases/npd-group-amazon-ties-walmart-second-ranked-u-s-music-retailer-behind-industry-leader
The person who led the development of Palm's webOS UI has just left Palm and taken a job at Google. This is considered to be a big loss to HP and Palm:
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100527/exclusive-palm-loses-mobile-design-guru-matias-duarte/
Acer showed off its Android Stream smartphone and said that they will have an Android tablet computer to compete against the iPad by the end of the year:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/acer-shows-android-powered-stream-smartphone-hints-tablet/2010-05-27
Verizon is being sued by a customer who alleges that one of its debt collectors threatened to blow up his house over a $308 unpaid bill!
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/verizon-wireless-bill-collector-allegedly-threatens-blow-mans/story?id=10747872
More than a half a million people are hungover at work each day and the problem is expected to be worse during the World Cup:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1281491/Half-million-staff-hangovers-day--World-Cup-make-worse.html