A new Motorola lawsuit, filed yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and spotted by patent blogger Florian Mueller, claims Apple is infringing on six of the company’s patents with two of its latest product offerings: the iPhone 4S and iCloud.
In the suit–Motorola’s second against Apple in this particular court–the company makes the case that Apple has infringed and continues to infringe on those patents. Motorola is seeking damages and an injunction of the two products.
“Apple’s infringing activities have caused and will continue to cause …

The possibility of self-driving cars have been a hot debate for years now, and many companies — such as Google, Ford and Volvo — have dabbled in the area producing conceptual designs and even testing real-life models on real-life highways.
And now, BMW is testing the waters with its new hands-free “ultimate driving machine.” The German automaker has been drawing press interest in its recent showing of what will be possible in the next 10 to 15 years with self-driving cars. BMW announced in August its “ConnectedDrive Connect” (CDC) system.
BMW this …

The sudden popularity of tablet computers such as the Apple iPad® has not allowed for the development of guidelines to optimize users’ comfort and well-being. In a new study published in Work: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment, and Rehabilitation, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health, Microsoft Corporation, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital report that head and neck posture during tablet computer use can be improved by placing the tablet higher to avoid low gaze angles, and through the use of a case that provides optimal viewing angles.
“Compared to typical …

When Gang Ren whirls the controls of his cryo-electron microscope, he compares it to fine-tuning the gearshift and brakes of a racing bicycle. But this machine at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is a bit more complex. It costs nearly $1.5 million, operates at the frigid temperature of liquid nitrogen, and it is allowing scientists to see what no one has seen before.
At the Molecular Foundry, Berkeley Lab’s acclaimed nanotechnology research center, Ren has pushed his Zeiss Libra 120 Cryo-Tem microscope to resolutions …

Official league tables published today show 107 state schools in England are failing to meet basic GCSE targets.
It means these schools could be pulled out of local authority control and turned into an independent academy under the leadership of a third-party sponsor.
Under Coalition reforms, all schools are supposed to ensure 35 per cent of pupils gain five A* to C grades, including the basic subjects of English and maths, or satisfy new “pupil progress” measures charting children’s rate of improvement between 11 and 16.
Today’s data also shows that almost 900 …

Regardless of the outcome of the presidential primaries, Ice-T already has his mind made up about the forthcoming election.
The rapper and actor, who is making his directorial debut at the Sundance Film Festival with the documentary “Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap,” says he expects President Barack Obama to be re-elected. After that, he predicts Hillary Clinton will be the next president.
The 53-year-old entertainer said, “She did the Secretary of State job, she was a G, she held it down, she didn’t cry,” referring to the former New York …

Wall Street is set for a slightly lower open on Thursday, giving back some of the gains from the previous session, when the Federal Reserve boosted equities by saying it was likely to keep interest rates near zero until at least late 2014.
At 4:21 a.m. ET, futures for the S&P 500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq 100 were down between 0.1 and 0.3 percent.
The FTSEurofirst 300 <.FTEU3> index of leading European shares was up 0.3 percent at 1,042.50 points, with miners higher on stronger copper prices, which were boosted by the …

Chinese investors are trying to follow the rules when spending money abroad, the head of one of China’s biggest private equity firms said Thursday, as global leaders increasingly look to the country to prop up the world economy.
Worries that Europe’s slowdown would hurt stronger economies are overshadowing discussions at this week’s World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. Attention turned Thursday to how China can help, even as some remain wary about its growing dominance.
John Zhao, CEO of Hony Capital, said foreign prejudice about Chinese investments is …

Italy could turn out to be the investment bet of the decade if European Union leaders manage to contain the euro zone crisis.
But buying Italian debt at this time is only for the brave – and those who believe the worst of the danger for the euro zone’s third biggest economy has passed, according to interviews with more than a dozen investors and bankers.
George Soros called returns above 6 percent on 10-year Italian debt a “dangerous” but “attractive” speculation.
“That’s a fantastic yield, which is not going to stay up there …

Microsoft said on Monday that a former employee of antivirus company Agnitum is responsible for the operations of the Kelihos botnet.
The company said that Andrey N. Sabelnikov, a citizen of Russia, is responsible for the malware.
Kelihos was used to send out spam and spread malware to “thousands of PCs”, until it was neutralized in 2011.
“Microsoft presented evidence to the court that Mr Sabelnikov wrote the code for and either created, or participated in creating, the Kelihos malware,”  Richard Domingues Boscovich, Senior Attorney at Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, said in a …