Some inter­est­ing stor­ies from the last few days:
Play­Sta­tion turns super­com­puter

“Sci­ent­ists at the US National Cen­ter for Super­com­put­ing Applic­a­tions, (NCSA) have linked together 70 Play­Sta­tion 2s to find out how good they are at crunch­ing numbers.”

Broad­band bal­loons take off

“It has long been assumed that afford­able, high-speed broad­band to every area of the UK was only pos­sible via road-disrupting cable lay­ing or expens­ive satel­lite con­nec­tions.
But a com­pany called Sky­Linc has found a happy medium in base sta­tions, float­ing 1.5km above the sur­face of the Earth on bal­loons, or tethered aero­stats as they are more tech­nic­ally known.
The tech­no­logy behind the idea has been around for years, with the US Gov­ern­ment oper­at­ing sev­eral such aero­stats as com­mu­nic­a­tion sys­tems on its bor­ders and the US mil­it­ary employ­ing sim­ilar tech­no­logy for about 50 years.”

Bubbles Oust Vir­uses in Ther­apy

” Dutch research­ers say they’ve demon­strated a way to use sound waves to manip­u­late micro­scopic bubbles so that they can deliver DNA and other molecules, such as drugs, into cells.
The goal is to reduce genet­i­cists’ reli­ance on vir­uses to deliver genes into cells, a method that has led to can­cers in some patients, said Uni­ver­sity of Twente phys­i­cist Claus-Dieter Ohl.”