Online shoppers, keep that mouse handy
This holiday season, more than ever, online shoppers need to pay attention to the fine print on the screen, and stay alert for deals that are changing daily and sometimes hourly.

Get the best deal on budget LCD HDTVs 
The digital television transition is right around the corner, so high-definition TVs with their built-in digital tuners will top many gift lists this holiday season. But before you buy, make sure you’re getting the biggest bang for your buck.

Spammers sent packing — for now — by Web shutdown
SAN FRANCISCO – E-mailers, enjoy the early holiday gift: Spam volume has been cut by more than half because Internet providers pulled the plug on a Web hosting firm that was allegedly helping some of the world’s most dastardly junk e-mail gangs.

Gartner: 85 percent of companies using open source
Eighty-five percent of companies are already using open-source software, with most of the remaining 15 percent expecting to do so within the next year, according to analysts at Gartner.

Pew study cites personal tech frustrations
According to a new survey, “When Technology Fails,” from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, many consumers find it difficult to set up devices, are frustrated when technology breaks down and often need help from someone else to fix the problem.

Through website, patients creating own drug studies
When Italian researchers published a small study in February saying that lithium, a medication used to treat bipolar disorder, appeared to slow the progression of Lou Gehrig’s disease, others with the devastating neurodegenerative disorder began to try it themselves. They did not have years to wait for a more conclusive study. More than 200 of them went a step further, using the Internet to report the progress of their disease while taking the drug. The result is an online clinical trial of sorts, not one conducted by doctors at prestigious hospitals according to rules intended to ensure scientific rigor and patient safety, but by ordinary people who want others to benefit from their experience…

Online social networks, blogs, and homemade videos have, for better or worse, created user-generated upheavals in a variety of industries, propelling information forward ever faster.

Pioneering Stem Cell Surgery Announced
PARIS — Physicians at four European universities have completed what they say is the first successful transplant of a human windpipe using a patient’s own stem cells to fashion an organ and prevent its rejection by her immune system, according to an article in the British medical journal The Lancet. One of the physicians said the surgery could herald a “new age in surgical care.”
This is big, my friends.  Rilly, rilly big.  Someday we’ll be able to re-grow body parts at will.

Artificial heart kept girl awaiting transplant alive for 118 days
From July 4, when a first heart transplant failed, until Oct. 29, when she was well enough for another heart, D’Zhana’s chest cavity was empty, doctors said. Beside her during that time was an artificial heart with two pumps. One took over for the heart’s right ventricle, pumping blood to the girl’s lungs; the other did the work of the left ventricle, pumping blood to her body.

Toxic Chemicals Blamed for Gulf War Illness
Report also cites drug given to U.S. troops to protect them from nerve gas

More Than Half Of US Chronically Ill Adults Skip Needed Care Due To Costs
Compared to patients in seven other countries, chronically ill adults in the United States are far more likely to forgo care because of costs; they also experience the highest rates of medical errors, coordination problems, and high out-of-pocket costs, according to a new study

How Cells Take Out The Trash To Prevent Disease
[C]ells have developed complex systems for recycling, reusing and disposing of damaged, nonfunctional waste proteins. When such systems malfunction and these proteins accumulate, they can become toxic, resulting in many diseases, including Alzheimer’s, cystic fibrosis and developmental disorders.

Researchers Identify Toehold For HIV’s Assault On Brain
ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2008) — Scientists have unraveled in unprecedented detail the cascade of events that go wrong in brain cells affected by HIV, a virus whose assault on the nervous system continues unabated despite antiviral medications that can keep the virus at bay for years in the rest of the body.

Stress warps brains and behavior, researchers say
WASHINGTON — Scientists have discovered how stress — in the form of emotional, mental or physical tension — physically reshapes the brain and causes long-lasting harm to humans and animals.

To tame the belly, manage the brain
A growing body of research is erasing any doubt that eating is as much about our brains as our stomachs… Much of this work is driven by interest in pure science, but food research is never far from a practical application. Battling obesity is one such application.

McDonald’s courts moms as emissaries
Fast-food chain enlists toughest customers to talk up menu’s healthful side

Nearly 1 in 3 Asthma Cases May Be Misdiagnosed
Too many patients aren’t getting a key lung test, experts say.

Gene Chips Accurately Detect Pneumonia In ICU Patients On Ventilators
[R]esearchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report they have validated the use of gene chip technology to rapidly and accurately detect pneumonia associated with ventilator use in hospitalized patients. While more testing is needed among larger patient groups, their work suggests gene chips may lead to early, more accurate diagnosis and treatment of ventilator-associated pneumonia, one of the most common and deadly hospital-acquired infections in the United States.

Bacteria, fungus problems? Try copper socks
SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Copper socks? Copper towels? How about copper subway poles? These are only a few of the uses Chile, the world’s biggest copper producer, is applying to the red metal now used more in the construction and auto sectors… Manufacturers say copper has properties that kill bacteria and reduce threats of infections.

Vitamin C, E Supplements Won’t Help Prevent Cancer
Findings follow similar results for the prevention of heart disease

Discovery offers way of tracking cancer in blood
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Tiny sacs released from tumor cells and circulating in the blood carry genetic information about the tumor, offering a new way to track and treat the cancer, U.S. researchers said on Sunday… These membrane-covered packets, called exosomes, represent a new way of getting information about a cancer, offering a means of choosing the best therapy, seeing how a patient responds to treatment, and possibly offering a way to deliver therapies back to the tumor.

How Cancer Spreads: Signaling Between Protein, Growth Factor Is Critical For Coordinated Cell Migration
ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2008) — The mysterious process that orchestrates cells to move in unison to form human and animal embryos, heal wounds, and even spread cancer depends on interaction between two well-known genetic signaling pathways, … researchers have discovered.

Protein Compels Ovarian Cancer Cells To Cannibalize Themselves
ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2008) — A protein known to inhibit the growth of ovarian cancer works in part by forcing cancer cells to eat themselves until they die, researchers … report.

Family History Ups Breast Cancer Risk Even Without BRCA Gene
Unknown mutations may account for increased odds, researchers say

Psychological Counseling Boosts Breast Cancer Outcomes
Interventions cut risk of recurrence, lengthened disease-free survival, study finds

Study Singles Out Beachgoers’ Skin Cancer Risk
The most vulnerable use the least sunscreen, have greatest desire to tan

Stay Upbeat, Exercise to Help Prevent Cancer in Old Age
Risk factors study found little link between drinking and malignancies

Fewer Brain ‘Tangles’ May Mean Smarter Old Age
Autopsies of quick-witted elderly hint at how they stayed that way

Newborn Neurons In Adult Brain Can Settle In The Wrong Neighborhood
These findings offer extremely valuable, although unanticipated, input for investigators whose goal is to develop transplantation strategies to treat brain injuries or neurodegeneration. “Our data shows that cells that fail to find their ‘right spot’ might actually become integrated into the brain and possibly interfere with normal information processing,” says the study’s lead author.

‘Orphan’ Genes Play An Important Role In Evolution
The data indicate that “novel” genes are involved in generation of novel morphological features that characterise different species, thus pointing the way to a new, more complete understanding of how evolution works at the level of a particular group of animals. Emergence of “novel” genes may reflect evolutionary processes which allow animals to adapt in the best way to changing environmental conditions and new habitats.

King Herod May Have Been Buried With Lavish Artwork
King Herod may have been buried in a crypt with lavish Roman-style wall paintings of a kind previously unseen in the Middle East, Israeli archaeologists said Wednesday. The scientists found such paintings and signs of a regal two-story mausoleum, bolstering their conviction that the ancient Jewish monarch was buried there.

Scientists find prehistoric “nuclear family”
LONDON (Reuters) – A 4,600-year-old grave in Germany containing the remains of two adults and their children provides the earliest evidence that even prehistoric tribes attached importance to the family unit, researchers said on Monday.

Kangaroo genes close to humans
CANBERRA (Reuters) – Australia’s kangaroos are genetically similar to humans and may have first evolved in China, Australian researchers said Tuesday.

Rare dinosaur nest offers look into bird evolution
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – Canadian researchers say they’ve narrowed down the likely owner of a dinosaur nest, abandoned on a river’s edge 77 million years ago, adding the discovery offers a unique look at dinosaur reproduction and the evolution of birds… “This nest reveals that modern birds are not unique in the way they reproduce,” [Francois Therrien, curator of dinosaur palaeoecology at the Royal Tyrrell and co-investigator] said. “They actually inherited a lot of their ways of laying eggs from their dinosaur ancestors.”

Shuttle astronauts deliver space station’s new gear
HOUSTON (Reuters) – Space shuttle astronauts delivered tons of custom upgrades to the International Space Station on Monday and prepared for their first spacewalk to restore the outpost to full power.

Gamma-Ray Evidence Suggests Ancient Mars Had Massive Oceans
ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2008) — An international team of scientists who analyzed data from the Gamma Ray Spectrometer onboard NASA’s Mars Odyssey reports new evidence for the controversial idea that oceans once covered about a third of ancient Mars.

First photo of planets outside solar system revealed
Astronomers reported Thursday that they have the first snapshot of another solar system one with three planets larger than Jupiter orbiting a nearby star.

Billions Of Particles Of Anti-matter Created In Laboratory
This new ability to create a large number of positrons in a small laboratory opens the door to several fresh avenues of anti-matter research, including an understanding of the physics underlying various astrophysical phenomena such as black holes and gamma ray bursts. Anti-matter research also could reveal why more matter than anti-matter survived the Big Bang at the start of the universe.

Physicists Steer Electrons With Laser Pulses
[Researchers] have found a way to steer the movement of electrons in a hydrogen molecule using ultrafast laser pulses. These pulses are so short that their duration is measured in attoseconds — that’s one billionth of a billionth of a second. In a recent research paper, the three collaborators explained how attosecond laser pulses can be used to direct the motion of an electron inside a hydrogen molecule, and what the measurable consequences of this control over the electron would be.