The technique could allow the development of sophisticated biological sensors that use functioning brain cells, the researchers say. This type of device would identify a compound - a deadly nerve agent or poison, for example - by measuring its effect on a functioning network of neurons.

Axons and dendrites carry electrical signals between neurons. The electrical activity of the neural network can easily be measured because carbon nanotubes conduct electricity and so can function as electrodes.

The process makes it possible to create more uniform neural networks, Hanein says. In experiments they last longer than other artificial networks, surviving for up to 11 weeks.

Smith says finding ways to connect to individual neurons in similar arrangements would be even more useful. "That's the holy grail," he told New Scientist. "The best labs can only really put an electrode near a neuron of interest. Finding a way to connect directly and non-invasively is much harder."

The Washington Post and New York Times are reporting on a Bush administration initiative that has tapped into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years. Relying on a presidential emergency declaration made under the International Emergency Economic Powers, the administration has been surveilling the data from the SWIFT database, which links about 7,800 banks and brokerages and handles billions of transactions a year.

Together with a hundredfold expansion of the FBI's use of "national security letters" to obtain communications and banking records, the secret NSA and Treasury programs have built unprecedented government databases of private transactions, most of them involving people who prove irrelevant to terrorism investigators.

Valence Media charged in its suit that on June 10, 2005, MPAA executives met with Anderson, a resident of Vancouver, Canada. Dean Garfield, the MPAA's director of legal affairs, was among the association's representatives who agreed to pay Anderson $15,000 to obtain private e-mails, financial and technology information, according to the court documents.

An MPAA executive told Anderson: "We don't care how you get it," Valence Media alleges in the court documents.

Anderson has provided a written agreement signed by an MPAA executive and other documentation related to Anderson being hired to gather information on Torrentspy and its executives, said Ira Rothken, Valence Media's attorney.

The purported contract includes a paragraph calling for the gathering of information on other peer-to-peer companies and torrent directories at odds with the MPAA, including The Pirate Bay, eXeem and Mininova.

US telco AT&T has rewritten its privacy policy to allow it to hand over customer records to whoever it wants.

The re-write has come about after the telco got into trouble for handing over phone records of ordinary Americans to the US government.

Legal experts say that AT&T seems to have re-written its so widely to avoid consumer-protection lawsuits. The outfit is being sued by San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation for allegedly allowing the NSA to tap into the company's data network, providing warrantless access to customers' e-mails and Web browsing.

The move goes back on a comment made last month when AT&T said in a statement it had "a long history of vigorously protecting customer privacy" and that "our customers expect, deserve and receive nothing less than our fullest commitment to their privacy."

In fact a line in the 2004 policy which said "that privacy is an important issue for our customers and members" has been deleted.

An Inquirer reader attending a conference in Japan was sat just feet away from a laptop computer that suddenly exploded into flames, in what could have been a deadly accident.

Guilhem, our astonished reader reports: "The damn thing was on fire and produced several explosions for more than five minutes".

"For the record, this is a Dell machine," notes Guilhem. "It is only a matter of time until such an incident breaks out on a plane," he suggests.

We don't have any further details of the model of the computer in question. In light of the evidence, however, we'd suggest you avoid actually using a laptop on your lap. Ouch.

The prototype is able to locate the position of a digital camera, before overwhelming it with white light to render any recorded images useless.

The technology works by looking for the digital camera's image sensor known as a charge-coupled device (CCD).

These silicon sensors are retroreflective, which means that they reflect light directly back to its origin, rather than scattering it.

"The biggest problem is making sure we don't get false positives from, say, a large shiny earring," said Jay Summet, a research assistant at Georgia Tech who helped build the device.

They also believe that a real-world version would probably use a laser to "blind" the image sensor.

The music conglomerate is promoting a new site, called Musicbox Video, that showcases videos, artist interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and other material from a broad portfolio of its artists.

But Sony will also actively encourage fan sites and bloggers--who are mostly used to receiving cease-and-desist letters from studios--to link to the material. Links for adding Musicbox content are displayed on the site.

The turnabout largely comes amid a revamp of the company being conducted by CEO Howard Stringer. It is also taking place because the videos, in Flash, can't be pirated, at least not easily.

Customer attitudes toward Sony will also play a part. Individuals do not get to program the content on the different Musicbox channels--just the channels they add.

An OpenReach techie was called out to the Manchester suburb of Chorlton on Monday after problems with voice calls. According to our correspondent, after a quick shimmy up the offending telegraph pole he calmly reported spiders had chewed through the line.

The problem was fixed and the engineer went on his way, leaving we at Vulture Central losing sleep over whether spiders are indeed seeking to bring the technological world sobbing to its knees. We contacted BT to ask whether arachnid attacks are becoming a bigger problem in Britain's telecoms infrastructure.

A spokesman said someone had the wrong end of the stick, and the engineer had just said there were spiders living in the pole top box, and the line had corroded, rather than being munched. Our correspondent assures us the engineer did say the spiders had eaten the wire.

Search engine outfit, Yahoo! is more ruthless at censoring its content in China than the locals, a media watch dog has barked.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said their tests showed that Yahoo.cn blocked a higher percentage of politically sensitive results than Google.cn or the beta version of msn.cn.

A spokesman for the group said that Google.cn is censored, but it’s far less than what Yahoo. Even Baidu didn't restrict access to some of the sites that Yahoo did.

Yahoo.cn and Baidu block access to the search engines for an hour in half the cases after a search was conducted using the sensitive keywords.

If you spend any significant amount of time browsing around YouTube, you'll notice a surprising number of videos consisting of people busting a move to popular music.

That has led to a recent spate of cease-and-desist notices from the music trade group directed at some users of YouTube. Despite the fact that the recordings are generally of poor quality-especially where the audio is concerned-the RIAA is moving to rid the Internet of the scourge of amateur Solid Gold dancers.

Typically, when the RIAA engages in some sort of enforcement action, it claims that the infringing activities are causing it a demonstrable financial loss. It's hard to see how the RIAA is suffering in any way from the presence of the videos. In fact, the argument could be made that the RIAA is actually benefiting from the videos, much like viral marketing.