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Cocoa consumers have lower disease risk: study

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Men who consumed the most cocoa had a 50 percent lower risk of dying from disease compared to those who did not eat cocoa, Dutch researchers said on Monday. Cocoa is known to lower blood pressure, though previous studies have disagreed about whether it staves off heart disease over the long-term particularly since it is contained in foods high in fat, sugar and calories. The new study in Archives of Internal Medicine concluded that it was not lower blood pressure that corresponded to the finding of a lower overall risk of death -- although the biggest cocoa consumers did have lower blood pressure and fewer cases of fatal heart disease than non-cocoa eaters. Instead, the report credited antioxidants and flavanols found in cocoa with boosting the functioning of cells that line blood vessels and for lessening the risks from cholesterol and other chemicals that can cause heart attacks, cancer and lung diseases. Flavanols are a class of healthy flavonoids that are found ...

Microsoft's Origami project

So today Microsoft officially flipped the switch on the buzz machine for their Origami Project -- an atypical viral marketing manuveur for a company whose products are usually known about years ahead of time . Scoble says its a device, the Internet's lighting up with rumors -- is it the Xbox portable ? Well, we dunno, but as usual got our hands on some pictures. And as usual we can't guarantee they're the real deal, though we are pretty confident in their source. So, let's go over it: these were sent to us detailing it as a Microsoft portable media player, which wouldn't be too far off from what Jobs and BusinessWeek both prophesied Microsoft doing (despite being pretty broadly denied from within). Now, here's the tricky part with these pictures -- what's with the keyboard and stylus? Because the last time we checked, their Portable Media Center ( PMC ) OS didn't have (known) support for touchscreen and keyboard input. So is this some new portable OS p...

Hubble Confirms New Moons of Pluto

From Hubblesite.org Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the presence of two new moons around the distant planet Pluto. The moons were first discovered by Hubble in May 2005, but the Pluto Companion Search team probed even deeper into the Pluto system with Hubble on Feb. 15 to look for additional satellites and to characterize the orbits of the moons. In the image, Pluto is in the center and Charon is just below it. The moons, provisionally designated S/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2, are located to the right of Pluto and Charon. Credit: NASA, ESA, H. Weaver (JHU/APL), A. Stern (SwRI), and the HST Pluto Companion Search Team

Google May Be Flirting with Social Bookmarks

From PCMag Internet search provider Google wants to capitalize on the social aspect of bookmarks, which are Internet addresses stored in Web browsers for one-click access, according to Google-watcher ValleyWag. Search providers have been trying to lure new customers, and keep their old ones, for years by tapping into the social aspect of what they offer, so what Google is supposedly working on is nothing new. Yahoo's photo-sharing site Flickr is one good example. But if this is true, Google's competitors and search consumers alike are bound to take notice because of Google's leading share of the Internet search market and its world-renowned brand. Read more here about Google's latest tool bar. In response to questions about the rumored effort, a representative of Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., wrote that "we're always exploring opportunities to expand our offerings, but don't have anything to announce at this time." The representati...

High speed "WiFiber"

From TechnologyPreview.com Atop each of the Trump towers in New York City, there's a new type of wireless transmitter and receiver that can send and receive data at rates of more than one gigabit per second -- fast enough to stream 90 minutes of video from one tower to the next, more than one mile apart, in less than six seconds. By comparison, the same video sent over a DSL or cable Internet connection would take almost an hour to download. This system is dubbed "WiFiber" by its creator, GigaBeam , a Virginia-based telecommunications startup . Although the technology is wireless, the company's approach -- high-speed data transferring across a point-to-point network -- is more of an alternative to fiber optics, than to Wi-Fi or Wi-Max, says John Krzywicki, the company's vice president of marketing. And it's best suited for highly specific data delivery situations. * This kind of point-to-point wireless technology could be used in situations where digging fiber...

An Unusually Smooth Surface on Saturn's Telesto

Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA Explanation: Why is Saturn's small moon Telesto so smooth? Possibly Telesto is covered with a type of granular icy material similar to that suspected of covering Pandora, another of Saturn's small moon's. If so, Telesto might be more like a pile of rubble than a solid body. This recently uncovered Solar System mystery is currently a topic of research, however. The unexpected finding originated last October when the robot Cassini spacecraft, currently orbiting Saturn, swooped past the 24-kilometer moon and captured the first ever image of Telesto's surface. Telesto orbits Saturn always just ahead of the much larger moon Tethys. Pictured above, Telesto's unusually smooth surface was found to show some large craters and boulders, but not the high density of craters found on nearby Tethys or most other Saturnian moons.