Ramesh Iyer, TI's head of worldwide business development for mobile computing told CNET that a Google OS could really be the tip of an iceberg. In other words, today the netbook, tomorrow the world.

However what seems to be happening is that yet another Linux distribution has gained the backing of a big outfit. Some new applications that run on it will be Javascript based and run through a web browser.

Little more than a month after acquiring Virtual Iron for an undisclosed fee, Oracle is effectively killing the company's virtualization product.

As many expected, Oracle intends to meld Virtual Iron's product with its own Oracle VM.

But Oracle has not said when the combined product will arrive, and Virtual Iron's partners and customers may feel that Oracle has left them out to the cold in terminating the company's product so swiftly.

"So basically, anyone that built their hosting infrastructure on VI...is now totally in the shit," that partner tells us.

"We value your investment and expertise in server virtualization, and encourage you to begin your partnership with Oracle right away," the letter reads.

In a controversial achievement, Japanese scientists announced on Wednesday they had created the world's first transgenic primates, breeding monkeys with a gene that made the animals' skin glow a fluorescent green.

The gene codes for green fluorescent protein (GFP), a substance that was originally isolated from a jellyfish and is now commonly used as a biotech marker.

"There's also a very important ethical debate, firstly about the animals themselves and secondly about what this might lead to in the future, whether it might be ethically justified to genetically engineer humans."

A new study of 3654 Vietnam War veterans finds that men with lower IQs are more likely to suffer from dozens of health problems - from hernias, to ear inflammation, to cataracts - compared with those showing greater intelligence.

This offers tantalising - yet preliminary - evidence that health and intelligence are the result of common genetic factors, and that low intelligence may be an indication of harmful genetic mutations.

Taking herbal food supplements is certainly not free of risk. Since 2005, the poison emergency centers in the German cities of Freiburg and Goettingen have registered a total of 17 patients with health problems after taking Chinese slimming capsules.

The authors report on a slimming pill on sale over the Internet. According to the advertising, this contains herbal substances and is declared as a food supplement.

The stink of flatulence and rotten eggs could provide a surprising lift for men. Hydrogen sulphide causes erections in rats and may one day provide an alternative to Viagra for men.

Nitric oxide (NO) helps relax the walls of arteries that supply the penis, allowing extra blood to flow in. Viagra works by blocking an enzyme that destroys NO.

Scott Wiltermuth of Stanford University in California and colleagues have found that activities performed in unison, such as marching or dancing, increase loyalty to the group.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville thinks this research helps explain why fascist leaders, amongst others, use organised marching and chanting to whip crowds into a frenzy of devotion to their cause, though these tactics can be used just as well for peace, he stresses.

The first public trial, or beta, version of Windows 7 has been released.

Although Windows 7 was a trial version it was, said Mr Ballmer, almost "feature complete" and would help to re-define the way people thought of the software.

Instead of it being an operating system mainly associated with a PC, he said, Windows was becoming a "connected platform and experience".

Sampling the bacterial DNA on human skin has revealed that while women's hands get washed more often than men's, they teem with a more diverse selection of germs.

Differences in sweat and sebum production, hormones and even the use of cosmetics might be involved, but it could simply be that men's skin is more acid - acid environments tend to have less microbial diversity.

"At a closer chemical analysis it comes out that our purple tomato has a very high antioxidant activity, almost tripled in comparison to the natural fruit thus it is very useful to study the effect of anthocyanins".

"But mice fed with purple tomatoes showed a significant increase of lifespan". The last group has reported an average lifespan of 182 days in comparison to the 142 recorded for mice fed standard diet.