langelgjm writes "In a closely-watched case, the U.S. Supreme Court today vindicated the first-sale doctrine, declaring that it "applies to copies of a copyrighted work lawfully made abroad." The case involved a Thai graduate student in the U.S. who sold cheap foreign versions of textbooks on eBay without the publisher's permission. The 6-3 decision has important implications for goods sold online and in discount stores. Justice Stephen Breyer said in his opinion (PDF) that the publisher lost any ability to control what happens to its books after their first sale abroad."

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See photos of amazing auroras taken by SPACE.com readers in 2013.

This is supposed to be a time of military budget cuts. Yet the Navy is planning a big push into laser weaponry in 2013. Some laser advocates don't see a contradiction.

Contractor may have had access to high-level imaging technology with potential military uses.

A researcher considers the first full-scale airplane tested in the Propeller Research Tunnel.

The giant squid is one of the most enigmatic animals on the planet. It is extremely rarely seen, except as the remains of animals that have been washed ashore, and placed in the formalin or ethanol collections of museums. But now, researchers have discovered that no matter where in the world they are found, the fabled animals are so closely related at the genetic level that they represent a single, global population, and thus despite previous statements to the contrary, a single species worldwide.

A new study conducted by monitoring the brain waves of sleeping adolescents has found that remarkable changes occur in the brain as it prunes away neuronal connections and makes the major transition from childhood to adulthood.

redkemper writes with an excerpt from BGR.com of interest to anyone in the market for a new phone: "Samsung's Galaxy S 4 might not offer much in the way of an exciting new exterior design, but inside, it's a completely different story. The retooled internals on the U.S. version of the Galaxy S 4 were put to the test by benchmark specialists Primate Labs and the results are impressive, to say the least. The Galaxy S 4 scored a 3,163 on the standard Geekbench 2 speed test, just shy of twice the iPhone 5's score of 1,596. That score was also good enough to top the upcoming HTC One, the Nexus 4 and the previous-generation Galaxy S III."

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MongoDB may be the most popular NoSQL database out there. Demand for the open source database is growing faster than every job skill other than HTML5, according to job search site Indeed.com.

All rocky exoplanets likely host oceans of liquid water shortly after they form, one prominent researcher says.

Neanderthal brains were adapted to allow them to see better and maintain larger bodies, according to new research. Although Neanderthals' brains were similar in size to their contemporary modern human counterparts, fresh analysis of fossil data suggests that their brain structure was rather different. Results imply that larger areas of the Neanderthal brain, compared to the modern human brain, were given over to vision and movement and this left less room for the higher level thinking required to form large social groups.

When sounds come alive, you can almost feel them in the air. Whether it is the deafening drums of an unforgettable concert or the endlessly changing buzz of a city, sounds seem to take on invisible forms. And now, thanks to the new audible art initiative Born of Sound, we can visualize the things we hear in printed works called "sound-forms."

Having a heart attack is no picnic. That?s obvious. And some might say the experience itself is traumatic enough that it should snap people out of unhealthful lifestyles. Not so. Part of the problem is that when patients leave the hospital, they?re bombarded with information about what they should and shouldn?t do. Jacob Sattelmair, who?s an epidemiologist by training, is trying to change that approach with Wellframe, an app that breaks down the cardiac rehabilitation process into daily digestible chunks of information delivered through a mobile device.

In an increasingly interconnected world, scientists are seeking safeguards against catastrophic cascades of failure like stock market crashes and widespread blackouts.

Wandering from show to show at SXSW this year, it was hard not to notice that electronic pop and rock are back together again, mashed up and fused into something new and not entirely well-defined.

Freshly Exhumed writes with an "inconvenient truth" as reported at Internet News: "Google Chrome running Chrome OS was hailed as being a survivor in the Pwnium/Pwn2own event that hacked IE, Firefox and Chrome browsers on Windows. Apple's Safari running on Mac OS X was not hacked and neither (apparently) was Chrome on Chrome OS. Google disclosed [Monday] morning that Chrome on Chrome OS had in fact been exploited — albeit, unreliably. The same researcher that took Google's money last year for exploiting Chrome, known publicly only as 'PinkiePie' was awarded $40,000 for exploiting Chrome/Chrome OS via a Linux kernel bug, config file error and a video parsing flaw." Asks Freshly Exhumed: "So, was it really Google Chrome, or was Linux to blame?"

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Not you of course, but everyone else sucks at searching, which is why usability expert Jakob Nielsen believes you should re-think your website's search tools. "Having varied vocabulary words spring from their foreheads wasn?t a survival skill for ice age hunters," writes Nielsen, "so most people today can?t think up good queries without help." It's up to you -- and your site -- to help them.

A group of tiny RNA molecules with a big role in regulating gene expression also appear to have a role in causing insulin resistance in woman with polycystic ovary syndrome and, perhaps, in all women, researchers report.

To engineers, it's a tale as old as time: Electrical current is carried through materials by flowing electrons. But physicists have now found that for copper-containing superconductors, known as cuprates, electrons are not enough to carry the current.

While it is well known that a majority of hip fracture patients of all ages and both sexes have insufficient or deficient levels of vitamin D, a new study looks at whether or not living in a warm, sunny climate improves patient vitamin D levels.