"The 31st running of the Dakar Rally is being held in South America for the second year, instead of the traditional African route, due to ongoing security concerns. This year's race began and will end in Buenos Aires, covering a looping 9,000 kilometers between Argentina and Chile over 14 stages. 362 Teams began the race with 176 motorcycles and quad bikes, 134 cars, and 52 trucks. The race is just over halfway completed now, the winners expected to cross the finish line on January 16th. Collected here are several photographs from the first 8 stages of this year's rally."

"Starting from first principles and general assumptions Newton's law of gravitation is shown to arise naturally and unavoidably in a theory in which space is emergent through a holographic scenario. Gravity is explained as an entropic force caused by changes in the information associated with the positions of material bodies. A relativistic generalization of the presented arguments directly leads to the Einstein equations. When space is emergent even Newton's law of inertia needs to be explained. The equivalence principle leads us to conclude that it is actually this law of inertia whose origin is entropic"

"Again, you have to reverse this thinking. When doing so, the picture that emerges is that of a gravitational attraction (acceleration defined by a gravitational potential) that results from a tendency of physical systems to evolve such that the holographically available bits saturate with information. This tendency towards bit saturation is an entropic effect, that we experience as gravitational attraction.

Verlinde goes further than Newtonian gravity. He discusses inertia, the equivalence principle, the Einstein equation, and also gives some hints towards implications for string theory."

"The Light Touch beams a touch sensitive 10 inch picture onto any flat surface, and runs Adobe Flash Lite 3.1, meaning there's distinct gaming possibilities for savvy developers, not just social networking and productivity apps. "

"The edges of the steak have cooled all the way down to around 125°F, allowing them to suck up even more liquid from the center of the steak. What's more, the center of the steak has by this time cooled down to around 120°F, causing it to widen slightly. Cut the meat open at this stage, and the liquid will be so evenly and thinly distributed throughout the steak that surface tension is enough to keep it from spilling out on the plate."

About 8 percent of human genetic material comes from a virus and not from our ancestors, according to an article by University of Texas at Arlington biology professor Cédric Feschotte published in the Jan. 7, 2010 issue of Nature magazine.

The research showed that the genomes of humans and other mammals contain DNA derived from the insertion of bornaviruses, RNA viruses whose replication and transcription takes place in the nucleus. Feschotte wrote on recent research led by Professor Keizo Tomonaga at Osaka University in Japan. Feschotte said this virally transmitted DNA may be a cause of mutation and psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and mood disorders.