What’s the Difference Between Viruses, Trojans, Worms, and Other Malware?

How much do you really know about viruses, spyware, scareware, trojans, and worms? Here’s a helpful guide to understanding all the different types of malware.
The point of today’s lesson, of course, is to help you teach your friends and family more about the different types of malware, and debunk a few of the common myths about viruses. Who knows, maybe you’ll learn a thing or two as well…

April Fools’ Day Pranks on the Internet Revealed

A few of the obligatory April Fools’ Day pranks tech firms will roll out today will be funny. Some will be believable. To confirm the jokes, and help you avoid endless “Did you see this” emails, we’re rounding them up here.

New Human Species Discovered

An international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig has sequenced ancient mitochondrial DNA from a finger bone of a female found in southern Siberia. She comes from a previously unknown human species, which lived about 48,000 to 30,000 years ago in the Altai Mountains in Central Asia.

Pulling Power Points the Way to World’s Strongest Insect — A Dung Beetle

Following months of gruelling tests and trials, scientists now reveal the World’s strongest insect to be a species of dung beetle called Onthophagus taurus.

First Temperate Exoplanet — Size of Jupiter — Discovered

An international team of scientists, including several who are affiliated with UC Santa Barbara, has discovered a new planet the size of Jupiter. The finding is published in the March 18 issue of the journal Nature.

The planet, called CoRoT-9b, was discovered by using the CoRoT space telescope satellite, operated by the French space agency, The Centre National d’Études Spatiales, or CNES. The newly discovered planet orbits a star similar to our sun and is located in the constellation Serpens Cauda, at a distance of 1500 light-years from Earth.

Facebook Edges Past Google to Become No. 1

Facebook replaced Google as the most visited Web site in the U.S. for a full week  for the first time.  Facebook was the most-visited Web site in the country for the week ending March 13, said Hitwise, an online traffic monitor, in a report today. While Google has returned to the top spot, Matt Tatham, a Hitwise spokesman, said grabbing that position for a whole week was a major milestone for Facebook.

Psychopaths’ Brains Wired to Seek Rewards, No Matter the Consequences

The brains of psychopaths appear to be wired to keep seeking a reward at any cost, new research from Vanderbilt University finds. The research uncovers the role of the brain’s reward system in psychopathy and opens a new area of study for understanding what drives these individuals.

Chilean Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days

The Feb. 27 magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile may have shortened the length of each Earth day.

Top 7 Most Hacked Softwares in 2009

What software are tops on a hackers’ hitlist? Applications and software that are most vulnerable and are the potential targets of scammers and hackers to install malicious codes into your PC?
Forbes recently released 2009’s `Most-Hacked Software’ list. The list names the software and applications that were biggest targets of hacker attacks in 2009. The software used most by hackers and other cyber criminals to sneak into your system and cause havoc.
Here’s the 7 Most Hacked Software.

Internet Freedom in Jeopardy After Google Ruling

Three(3) Google executives were convicted on Wednesday of violating privacy laws by allowing disturbing footage of a disabled Italian boy being bullied to be posted on the internet.  The ruling was the first of its kind in history and was condemned by critics as “the biggest threat to internet freedom we have seen”.

Women Are Smarter Than Men, Says Research

Women are cleverer than men, according to a recent report.  The conclusion was drawn following a five month online contest between the sexes conducted in nine languages and based on the popular board game Trivial Pursuit.

Mouse With Human Liver

How do you study-and try to cure in the laboratory-an infection that only humans can get? A team led by Salk Institute researchers does it by generating a mouse with an almost completely human liver. This “humanized” mouse is susceptible to human liver infections and responds to human drug treatments, providing a new way to test novel therapies for debilitating human liver diseases and other diseases with liver involvement such as malaria.

NASA Reveals Origin of Key Cosmic Explosions

New findings from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have provided a major advance in understanding a type of supernova critical for studying the dark energy that astronomers think pervades the universe. The results show mergers of two dense stellar remnants are the likely cause of many of the supernovae that have been used to measure the accelerated expansion of the universe.

What Happens To Our Online Identity After We Die?

In her mid-50s, the mother of one died suddenly, and her family was left to notify the people she knew about her passing.  Many of those friends, however, had stayed in touch with the woman only via Facebook, the popular Internet social-networking website. As a result, most were unknown to the family.

Are High Speed Elephants Running or Walking?

Most animals don’t think anything of breaking into a run: they switch effortlessly from walking to a high-speed bouncing run. But what about elephants? Their sheer size makes it impossible for them to bounce up in the air at high speeds. So how are high-speed elephants moving: are they running or walking?

Saturn’s Aurora Offer Stunning Double Show

An enormous and grand ringed planet, Saturn is certainly one of the most intriguing bodies orbiting the Sun. Hubble has now taken a fresh look at the fluttering aurorae that light up both of Saturn’s poles.

Migrating Insects Fly in the Fast Lane

A study published in Science, by researchers at Rothamsted Research (an institute of the BBSRC), the Met Office, the Natural Resources Institute, and the Universities of Exeter, Greenwich and York, sheds new light on the flight behaviours that enable insects to undertake long-distance migrations, and highlights the remarkable abilities of these insect migrants.

Hackers Screw Our Planet By Stealing Millions in Carbon Credits

Credit card numbers are so passe. Today’s hackers know the real powerhouse data to steal is emission certificates.
That’s exactly what hackers went after last week when they obtained unauthorized access to online accounts where companies maintain their carbon credits, according to the German newspaper Der Spiegel.

Astronaut Tweets Amazing Earth Images From Space

One of the astronauts currently in residence on the International Space Station is using Twitpic to send some spectacular imagery of our home planet back down to us Earthlings (that’s Mt. Kilimanjaro as seen from space at right).
 

Barefoot Running: How Humans Ran Comfortably and Safely Before the Invention of Shoes

New research is casting doubt on the old adage, “All you need to run is a pair of shoes.”

Scientists have found that those who run barefoot, or in minimal footwear, tend to avoid “heel-striking,” and instead land on the ball of the foot or the middle of the foot. In so doing, these runners use the architecture of the foot and leg and some clever Newtonian physics to avoid hurtful and potentially damaging impacts, equivalent to two to three times body weight, that shod heel-strikers repeatedly experience.