Recreational Provigil user testimonials are all over the web. Not only are people able to work with little or no sleep, the drug has the advantage of spurring weight loss and some users report a general mood enhancing side effect. The U.S. military has also reportedly tested it on helicopter and F117 pilots to see if they remain effective for up to 88 hours without sleep.

There are few side effects to Provigil compared to stimulants and it is supposedly not habit forming. That, of course, doesn’t mean it’s safe to take it just to be able to stay awake for 20 hours a day.

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The baby’s smile that gladdens a mother’s heart also lights up the reward centers of her brain, said Baylor College of Medicine researchers in a report that appears in the journal Pediatrics today.

The finding could help scientists figure out the special mother-infant bond and how it sometimes go wrong, said Dr. Lane Strathearn, assistant professor of pediatrics at BCM and Texas Children’s Hospital and a research associate in BCM’s Human Neuroimaging Laboratory.

“The relationship between mothers and infants is critical for child development,” said Strathearn. “For whatever reason, in some cases, that relationship doesn’t develop normally. Neglect and abuse can result, with devastating effects on a child’s development.”

To study this relationship, Strathearn and his colleagues asked 28 first-time mothers with infants aged 5 to 10 months to watch photos of their own babies and other infants while they were in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. The machine measures blood flow in the brain. In the scans, areas of increased blood flow “light up,” giving researchers a clue as to where brain activity takes place. In some of the photos, babies were smiling or happy. In others they were sad, and in some they had neutral expressions.

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Microsoft had offered to buy its rival’s search business but was rebuffed by Yahoo last month. A number of investors have criticised Yahoo’s decision. Yahoo shares closed up 12% at $23.91. Microsoft said it could start talks with a newly elected board after Yahoo’s August shareholder meeting.

‘Immediate proposal’

The software giant said in a statement it would be interested in discussing two options - buying the “search function with larger financial guarantees” or “purchasing the whole company”.

Shareholder Carl Icahn is trying to oust Yahoo’s board, including the internet firm’s co-founder and chief executive Jerry Yang. US billionaire Icahn, who has amassed a 5% stake in Yahoo, has been in talks with Microsoft over the past week about a possible deal. The corporate raider has said that replacing Yahoo’s nine directors at the firm’s annual meeting on 1 August is the only way to salvage a deal with Microsoft. But Yahoo said the push by Microsoft’s chief executive Steve Ballmer and Mr Icahn to force it into selling its search business was not in the best interests of shareholders.

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A French study of over 12,200 couples having fertility treatment suggests the chance of a successful pregnancy falls when the man is aged over 35. It adds that the chance is significantly lower if he is over 40. Previous studies have shown that both natural and assisted conception is more difficult if the man is over 40.

The researchers told a European reproductive health conference that it was likely the problems were caused by DNA damage in sperm.

Miscarriage risk

The researchers studied couples who had sought treatment for infertility at the Eylau Centre for Assisted Reproduction in Paris between January 2002 and December 2006. All were given intrauterine inseminations (IUI), also known as artificial insemination, where sperm is inserted into the womb when the woman is ovulating. It is given to couples where the woman has no fertility problems and is less invasive than IVF. The men’s sperm were examined for quantity, their ability to move and swim and their size and shape. Rates of pregnancy, miscarriage and births were recorded. In addition, the researchers analysed detailed data on the pregnancies, which allowed them to pinpoint factors associated with the man and the woman.

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The name of the game is called “unlocking the multiplier”, which will be played with the SB700 and SB750 southbridge chips. If you are running an upcoming 2.8 GHz Black Edition CPU, a motherboard with the old SB600 model (RD690) will keep the processor cores operating at 2.8 GHz. However, if you have a motherboard with the SB700 chipset, you will receive a free upgrade to 3.0 GHz. And if you get a motherboard with a SB750 chip, your processor will run at 3.2 GHz, which matches the clock speed of the Athlon X2 6400+ - the highest clocked processor AMD ever offerred.

We have seen motherboards with 780G, 790FX and 790GX chipsets in ATX and mATX form factors, which all support this feature. Now it is up to AMD to execute and deliver a compelling user processor.

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Loren Hrabak, a sales engineer with Thermalright, told us the HSC-101 case dissipates up to 150 watts of heat per side. One side of the case is for the processor while the other side is for the graphics card and other components.

The company is still finalizing what water blocks, tubing and other parts to include with the case. There is also no specified price, but it will probably be a bit expensive as the tooling costs required for the side panels must be astronomical.

Thermalright also showed off another case with six huge fans in the front and back. This is accomplished by moving the motherboard a few inches away from the back. Extender cables connect the i/o ports on the back of the motherboard to ports in the case.

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Scientists at the firm have shown off a prototype device layered with thousands of “hair-width” cooling arteries. They believe it could be a solution to the increasing amount of heat pumped out by chips as they become smaller and more densely packed with components.

The technology was demonstrated in IBM’s 3D chips, where circuits are stacked one on top of the other. Laying chips vertically, instead of side by side, reduces the distance data has to travel , enhancing performance and saving critical space.

“As we package chips on top of each other….we have found that conventional coolers attached to the back of a chip don’t scale,” explained Thomas Brunschwiler at IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory. In order to exploit the potential of high-performance 3D chip stacking, we need interlayer cooling.”

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GigaOm is reporting that Broadcom is Apple’s supplier for GPS chips that are inside the next iPhone, expected to arrive with a 3G cellular networking chip within a few weeks. GPS is an increasingly common feature inside smartphones, and is much more accurate than the cell-tower and Wi-Fi positioning system that Apple rolled out in January.

Rumors of GPS capabilities inside the forthcoming iPhone trickled out earlier this month, in the form of possible geotagging code noticed inside the iPhone software development kit. GigaOm notes a report from Popular Mechanics that reveals GPS manufacturers are shaking in their boots over the prospect of a GPS-enabled iPhone.

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Next week, Advanced Micro Devices plans to announce a project designed to teach kids how to build video games that promote social causes such as fighting poverty or protecting the environment. Called Changing the Game, the project will fund nonprofit organizations that inspire kids with video games, and it will develop curriculum for youth to build their own software for games. Changing the Game is the first initiative funded by the chipmaker’s newly formed AMD Foundation, a grant-making organization.

At the same time next week, Microsoft will show off the first of the environmental education games developed by high school and college kids participating in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup, a global competition around software for social change. (The Imagine Cup winners will be announced in Paris in July.)

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After 4 years the Beijing Airport -currently the biggest one in the world- is finished, just in time for the 2008 Olympics. The airport, designed by Foster + Partners, turned out to be a very efficient building in terms of in terms of operational efficiency, passenger comfort, sustainability and access to natural light.

As an interpretation of traditional chinese culture the roof of the airport has a dragon-like form.

According to Norman Foster :

[…] this is a building borne of its context. It communicates a uniquely Chinese sense of place and will be a true gateway to the nation. This is expressed in its dragon-like form and the drama of the soaring roof that is a blaze of ‘traditional’ Chinese colours – imperial reds merge into golden yellows. As you proceed along the central axis, view of the red columns stretching ahead into the far distance evokes images of a Chinese temple.

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According to ZDNet.com, Microsoft has been experimenting with ways to reward users with points, prizes and cash — via programs like the “Live Search Club” — for the past year-plus. While the Live Search Club program did boost temporarily Microsoft’s search share, it didn’t help it beyond a few percentage points. A number of high profile e-commerce sites are participating in the early stages of the program, which is being dubbed “Live Search Cashback” and is based at least partially on technology developed from Jellyfish, a company Microsoft acquired in 2007. A message on the Jellyfish site says the site is down “currently offline to perform necessary service upgrades and enhancements.”

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Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are not doing enough to eliminate potentially harmful chemicals and metals from their games consoles, Greenpeace has said.

The body examined materials used inside the Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3), Microsoft Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. Greenpeace said that while all three machines complied with European laws, the consoles still contained harmful materials that “needed to be replaced”.

Nintendo’s environment policies were “non-existent”, Greenpeace added. “Nintendo doesn’t have any environmental policies, ” said Zeina Al-Hajj, Greenpeace’s International Toxic Campaign co-ordinator. “We were shocked with Nintendo; it was our biggest surprise.” Nintendo is ranked at the bottom of Greenpeace’s global assessment of “green” technology companies. ” Recently they added a list of certain commitments they have, which purely comply with legislation,” said Ms Al-Hajj. The organisation has called on all technology firms to take immediate action to eliminate toxic chemicals from products.

The report found that the PS3 and 360 both contained “very high” levels of chemicals, called phthalates, which are used to “soften” flexible materials like wires and cable coatings. They are not permitted in toys sold in Europe but under EU regulations games consoles are not classed as toys.

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Dramatic evidence of the break-up of the Arctic ice-cap has emerged from research during an expedition by the Canadian military.

Scientists travelling with the troops found major new fractures during an assessment of the state of giant ice shelves in Canada’s far north. The team found a network of cracks that stretched for more than 10 miles (16km) on Ward Hunt, the area’s largest shelf. The fate of the vast ice blocks is seen as a key indicator of climate change.

One of the expedition’s scientists, Derek Mueller of Trent University, Ontario, told me: “I was astonished to see these new cracks. “It means the ice shelf is disintegrating, the pieces are pinned together like a jigsaw but could float away,” Dr Mueller explained.

According to another scientist on the expedition, Dr Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa, the new cracks fit into a pattern of change in the Arctic. “We’re seeing very dramatic changes; from the retreat of the glaciers, to the melting of the sea ice. We had 23% less (sea ice) last year than we’ve ever had, and what’s happening to the ice shelves is part of that picture.”

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Now, thanks to NASA’s Swift satellite, astronomers have seen a star actually blow up. The discovery is due to Swift’s capabilities and some alert astronomers, but also a bit of good luck.

On January 9, 2008, Alicia Soderberg and Edo Berger of Princeton University, in Princeton, N.J., were using Swift’s X-ray Telescope to observe a distant spiral-shaped galaxy known as NGC 2770. Suddenly, at 9:33 in the morning Eastern Time, the telescope picked up a powerful burst of X-rays coming from the galaxy. The burst lasted 5 minutes before it faded away.

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The research firm also estimated total low-cost PC shipments in 2008 will only reach eight million units.

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