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The olinguito was mistaken for its larger close cousin for more than a century (Pic: Mark Gurney, Smithsonian Institution website) The woolly-furred olinguito is related to raccoons and coatis and lives in the cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador (Pic: Mark Gurney, Smithsonian Institution website) A creature that looks like a cross between a house cat and a teddy bear has been named as a new species after being wrongly identified for 100 years. The woolly-furred olinguito, which weighs 0.9kg (2lb), is related to raccoons and coatis and lives in the cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador. For more than a century it was mistaken for its larger close cousin, the olingo. But an examination of the skull, teeth and skin of museum specimens has now confirmed that it is a different species - the first New World carnivore to be identified in 35 years. US scientists from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC reported on the discovery. Compared with the olingo, its teeth and skul...

The world’s first lab-grown burger has been cooked and eaten at a news conference in London. Scientists took cells from a cow and turned them into strips of muscle, which were then combined and made into a patty. English chef, Richard McGowan, was given the task of preparing the burger for food critics Hanni Ruetzler and Josh Schonwald, who, overall, gave a positive response. Researchers said the technology could help with meeting the growing demand for meat worldwide. “I think most people just don’t realise that the current meat production is at its maximum and is not going to supply sufficient meat for the growing demand in the next 40 years, so we need to come up with an alternative, there’s no question. And this can be an ethical and environmentally friendly way to produce meat,” the scientist behind the burger, Professor Mark Post, from Maastricht University explained. He and his team are using similar techniques to researchers involved in growing human tissue fr...

  Ricky Naputi, thought to be one of the world's fattest men, died in November of last year, but had been filmed during his final days for a TV special.</p><br /><br /> " alt="Ricky Naputi, who was the world’s fattest man, ate himself to death." src="http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1353826.1369414927!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_635/fat25n-1-web.jpg" width="635" height="354"> Ricky Naputi, thought to be one of the world’s fattest men, died in November of last year, but had been filmed during his final days for a TV special. The tragic final days of one of the world’s fattest men were spent desperately hoping to lose the weight that kept him bedridden for five years. Ricky Naputi, who weighed nearly 900 pounds, died in November 2012, but before he passed, the 39-year-old opened up his home to reality TV cameras from TLC. The cable network aired his story Wednesday night in a specia...

As a cadre of Google executives took turns touting Google's newest products at a conference in California on Wednesday, they also described how they were working toward a future in which technology would disappear. That might sound like a bizarre mission for a tech company. Yet they promised that by fading into the background of our lives, technology would become easier to use, more intuitive, more efficient and more anticipatory, even allowing people to speak to Google like it were a person, rather than a piece of software. Google would usher in this new world with tools that would bring web services into every crevice of our lives, from maps that know where we'll go next, to Google Glass, eyewear that puts the Internet mere millimeters away from our eyeballs.

The music streaming wars have officially begun. Google on Wednesday announced Google Play Music All Access, a streaming music service for smartphones, tablets and desktops. All Access, which launches in the U.S. on Wednesday, allows users to stream "millions" of songs, create personalized radio stations and discover music based on their music preferences, according to the company. "This is radio without rules," Chris Yerga, Android's engineering director, said when he introduced the service at Google's annual I/O conference in San Francisco. "It's as lean back as you want to as or as interactive as you want it to be." The service, which will be available for $9.99 per month after a monthlong free trial, competes directly with Spotify, the 5-year-old streaming music service that launched in the U.S. in 2011, as well as Pandora, the Internet radio giant. Unlike All Access, which has a monthly fee, Spotify uses a "freemium" model; ...

  Angelina Jolie WASHINGTON (AFP) – Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie revealed Tuesday she has undergone a double mastectomy to reduce her high risk of breast cancer, encouraging other women to address threats to their health. The ultra-glamorous Jolie — whose mother Marcheline Bertrand died of ovarian cancer at the age of 56 — said she had managed to keep the issue quiet for months and continue working. Three months of grueling medical procedures including breast reconstruction ended in late April. Jolie, whose father is Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight, said her chances of developing breast cancer are now just five percent. “Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy,” the 37-year-old actress wrote in The New York Times. “I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex,” she wr...

Windows 8 has been an enigma from the time of its release. Backed by probably the biggest marketing campaign ever for an operating system, Windows 8 has not managed to take the market by storm. Rather, its progress has been slow and gradual. Though Microsoft has tried its best to hype up every small achievement, the latest version of their operating system has received its fair share of criticism. Yet, there is one piece of news which will put a smile on the face of Windows proponents who have had to work very hard to defend their beloved OS.

When Google Glass was first “announced” back in early 2012, the rumor mill went on overdrive. Speculation was rife about what Google was planning to do. Wearable technology ideas were thrown left and right. Augmented reality rumors were even brought up. At this point, with Google Glass being available to a few people , we know much more about Google’s “next big thing”, but I wager that many an average consumer still is not totally clear about what Google Glass can do. Sure, we know that it gives the user the power to be connected by merely wearing the device. You can take pictures, tweet, and do all sorts of stuff you can do with your smartphone right now. But what are the Google Glass features that will really convince you to shell out hundreds – maybe a thousand – dollars for something that, depending on your perspective, looks really cool or really dorky? Here are some of the Google Glass features that just might push you over the line of doubt. 1. Prism screen display It really i...

A new camera is breaking barriers A new digital camera designed by a team of scientists literally sees what bugs see. The camera’s design recreates the structure of insects’ eyes to project a fuller, wider, and more focused view than is possible with even the best conventional digital cameras today. Fire ants and bark beetles were the specific model for this camera, according to a report that the researchers, one of whom is John Rogers, a University of Illinois chemistry and physics professor, published in the May 2 edition of Nature . The report explains that the eye of one of these bugs consists of 200-500 long, cylindrical units called omatidia, each of which includes a cornea connected to a photosensitive organ and surrounded by dark pigment to keep light on one lens from leaking into another lens. All of these omatidia cluster together, with the lens facing outward, to form the bulging multicellular eye shape that we all associate with the insect kingdom. The only key differenc...