Gregory Mone

All across the globe yesterday, users tried and failed to get their daily dose of yawning kittens and manic explosions. The problem? Pakistan accidentally hijacked YouTube. It started when the government of Pakistan tried to limit access to a video critical of Islam. In order to keep its citizens from playing the clip, reportedly a portion of an inflammatory film by the Danish Dutch politician Geert Wilders, Pakistan Telecom had local Internet service providers block the site by rerouting users—instead of getting the video site, they'd hit a blank page.

Gaming giant Electronic Arts recently announced its intention to buy Take Two Interactive, the shop behind violent titles like Grand Theft Auto and Max Payne, plus the unsettling but ridiculously creative BioShock. Since EA isnt known for Mature titles, some in the gaming community feared theyd soften those edgier games. But EAs CEO has some encouraging words for fans. Regarding those games, he said in a call with Multiplayer, I wouldnt change a line of code.

This Saturday, Japan launched a satellite, Kizuna. If all goes well, starting in July Kizuna will provide commercial users with the fastest Internet on Earth. Less speedy is the faster-than-fiber-optic connection speeds that the average user can access with just an 18-inch-wide dish. Those speeds will be available to offices and homes in remote areas, places that dont have the necessary telecommunications infrastructure.

The Emotiv mind-reading headset, according to some reports, is ready for the real world. Sort of.

Scientists at the Ecole Superieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles in Sheboygan, Wisconsin—wait, I mean Paris, France—have created a new kind of rubber that can bind back together after being broken in two.

A handful of start-ups are getting ready to challenge Googles predominance in the Web sleuthing world by offering whats known as semantic search.

The companies—Powerset, Hakia, Cognition Search, Lexxe—are trying to develop a search technology that would allow you to look for material on the Web while writing like a normal, educated human, instead of just entering keywords, and dropping all the in-between stuff that gives us those wonderful things called sentences.

Given that 75 million people are fans of the racing circuit, physicist Diandra Leslie-Pelecky probably doesnt have to worry too much about finding an audience for her book on the intricacies of stock-car racing, The Physics of Nascar. But this is hardly just a story for race fans. Its a crash course in chemistry, physics and more. In the first few chapters, she gets down to the molecular levelat some points literallyin describing the stock car chassis, diagrams how welding works, and even takes a few paragraphs to explain why the white paint on a car appears white to our eyes.

But its when she moves out of the shop and onto the track that the book really takes off, as she breaks down engines, brakes, tires, drag and lift; the dynamics of racing itself.

Not long after Fidel Castro took control of Cuba, he declared that the future of the country would rest with scientists"un futuro de hombres de ciencia." After Castro formally stepped down on Tuesday, Discovery News published a photo-based review of some of the best known Cuban scientific leaders of the Castro era; and the impact that high-level government decisions, and foreign relations, has had on research in the country. Among the featured few are the cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, pictured above, who flew on the Russian Soyuz 38 mission in 1980, and Vicente Verez-Bencomo, who has helped develop low-cost vaccines for meningitis and pneumonia.

Yesterday Nintendo announced that the WiiWare channel—which will offer a range of additional games, including an installment of the popular Final Fantasy, along with tools for developers to create new ones—will launch May 12. According to GameSpot, Nintendo of America says that there are already more than 100 projects in the works, and a healthy slate of those games will be ready to go on launch day. Giving a bigger pool of developers a chance to find new ways to use the Wii should prove interesting theres more room for creative applications.

Also, a week after the channel launch, Nintendos Wii Fit will go on sale.

I dont know of another place in the universe that would have this intensity of light. Thats a quote from physicist Karl Krushelnick of the University of Michigan. It might sound a bit bold, but he and his team believe theyve developed a laser beam with record-smashing intensity. According to the scientists, the HERCULES laser is so powerful that its roughly equivalent to concentrating all the sunlight heading towards Earth on a single grain of sand.

The Storm Worm, malicious software spread via spam, has been so active in recent weeks that the FBI has even gotten involved. The agency posted an alert on the home page of its Web site Tuesday: If you unexpectedly receive a Valentines Day e-card, be careful. It may not be from a secret admirer, but instead might contain the Storm Worm virus.

Forgot your charger? No problem. Scientists have developed a microfiber fabric that can generate enough electricity to juice up a cell phone or a mini-music player. If turned into clothing, the fabric would get its power from the action of your daily movement. The material uses zinc-oxide nanowires that are arranged in pairs—one wire in each grouping is coated with gold, and serves as the electrode. When the fabric moves, the wires move and bend, and the fabric translates this mechanical energy into electricity.

In the aftermath of the Feb. 6 tornado, scientists at The University of Alabama, Huntsville have been analyzing radar images of the event, searching for signs that might help them issue faster warnings in the future. The radar signature from debris sucked up into the air is so distinctive that the group thinks it may be able to develop an automated detection system. Essentially, theyd program computers to automatically pick out these signs in the data, and raise a flag immediately.

This week, Disney announced that it will reveal a $15 million, 5000-square-foot house of the future thats full of gadgets, and boasts smart countertops capable of recognizing the groceries you set down, and then suggesting recipes. (Boy, that sounds, umm, annoying.) The house will be unveiled in May as part of Tomorrowland, and will also include four actors playing a family of four, and demonstrating the homes coolest features.

Finally. NASA astronauts installed the $2-billion science laboratory known as Columbus as a new wing of International Space Station on Monday. Yesterday morning, European astronauts officially opened the hatches, and began the process of bringing the computer, cooling and ventilation systems online.