Do you know the name of the first computer game?   I confess I didn't and I learned programming on a Univac 1100/62 so I am a lot closer to the origination date of computer games than most people who will read this.

I assumed it was a kind of punchcard-loaded word game, like a 1960s Leather Goddesses of Phobos only without the divine genius of Dostoevsky that game possessed, but the history of video games is much more elaborate than that.

Yours truly has been watching telly again!  (I hope no-one will get the idea that the couch potato might be a significant source of starch.) 

This time, on our local BBC news service, we hear how researchers at the University of Portsmouth Institute of Biomedical and Biomolecular Science are cooperating with their Institute of Marine Sciences to harness the Gribble.  

LONDON, January 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Up to 50 per cent of medicines prescribed for long-term conditions are not taken as recommended. This can have dire consequences for patients leading to treatment failure and a worsening of their condition.

The pharmacy bodies have jointly welcomed the new guidance published by NICE, aiming to help all health professionals to engage with patients and to ensure that patients are involved in decisions about their treatment. Pharmacists have a key role to play in helping patients to understand more about their medicines and the options that they have.

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 27 /PRNewswire/ --

Medusa Medical Technologies Inc. (Medusa) announced today that its flagship electronic patient care reporting software, the Siren ePCR Suite(TM), now has an interface with the Philips HeartStart MRx monitor/defibrillator. This integrated solution is available worldwide and enables an easier workflow for patient care and reporting in the pre-hospital setting.

BOSTON, January 27 /PRNewswire/ --

BILLERICA, Massachusetts, January 27 /PRNewswire/ --

- SaaS provider says unique columnar, MPP database superior to traditional, open source approaches

After comparing the merits of traditional database technology, Glassbeam, the first company to provide a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for product analytics, has chosen the Vertica Analytic Database to keep storage costs low and performance high.

In doing some research for my next book (on the differences between science and pseudoscience), I re-read this rather stunning piece of writing: “Scientists these days tend to keep up a polite fiction that all science is equal. Except for the work of the misguided opponent whose arguments we happen to be refuting at the time, we speak as though every scientist's field and methods of study are as good as every other scientist's, and perhaps a little better. This keeps us all cordial when it comes to recommending each other for government grants.”

MALVERN, Pennsylvania and ABBOTT PARK, Illinois, January 27 /PRNewswire/ --

- Test may help physicians identify effective treatment earlier

Fujirebio Diagnostics, Inc. and Abbott have signed a license agreement to develop a new ovarian cancer test for use on Abbott's automated ARCHITECT(R) diagnostic analyzers. Under the agreement, Fujirebio Diagnostics will develop and manufacture for Abbott the HE4 biomarker, a simple blood test that may help in the risk stratification of women at high risk for ovarian cancer, a difficult disease to detect in its early stage.

FLORHAM PARK, New Jersey, January 27 /PRNewswire/ --

Global Crossing (Nasdaq: GLBC), a leading global IP solutions provider, today announced that it has introduced Global Crossing EtherExtend(SM) Flex Service to provide its customers with cost-effective and flexible Ethernet access to IP-based services.

EtherExtend(SM) Flex lowers a user's cost of access and matches the access Level of Service to the application's needs. It uses local access vendors to provide the last-mile Ethernet connection to Global Crossing's end-user customer. However, rather than forwarding the customer's traffic over a physical connection to Global Crossing, the traffic is forwarded via a logical connection as a Virtual Local Area Network over a physical Network to Network Interface.

The dying light of the George W. Bush presidency was marked by, among other things, a legislative move to derail recent gains in the federal government's opening of science. In particular, the innocuous sounding “Fair Copyright in Research Works Act” (HR 6845) introduced into the House by John Conyers, Jr. (DEM-MI), on 9 September 2008 [1] was poised to shut down the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy [2], as well as forestall the spread of this open-access spirit to other areas of federally sponsored research and scholarship. Hearings were held, but the bill did not make it through the House.

End of story? Not quite.