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Oddly, it's the burly action movies, usually the dominant genre, that fell out of recent audience favor. The otherworldly Daybreakers and Legion have underperformed, as has Mel Gibson's comeback revenge vehicle Edge of Darkness. And although $30 million isn't a bad start for Benicio Del Toro as Wolfman, the picture will need long legs, here and abroad, to earn back its husky $125 budget. Only Sherlock Holmes ($204 million) and The Book of Eli (which will hit $100 million before it's finished) have capitalized on blood and fisticuffs. Indeed, depending on whether you count Avatar...
...answer, evident in a paper just published in the journal Global Change Biology, is that it isn't easy - but it's possible nevertheless. A team of scientists led by Stephen Thackeray, an expert on lake ecology at the United Kingdom's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, has combed through observations of more than 700 species of fish, birds, mammals, insects, amphibians, plankton and a wide variety of plants across the U.K. taken between 1976 and 2005, and found a consistent trend: more than 80% of "biological events" - including flowering of plants, ovulation among mammals and migration of birds...
...California start-up company, Better Place, to build a nationwide grid to support electric cars, composed of thousands of charging poles in towns and cities and service stations along highways where depleted batteries can be swapped for fresh ones on long trips. (They're called "switching stations.") This isn't pie-in-the-sky stuff, either - Better Place announced last week that it had raised $350 million to support the venture, one of the largest rounds of venture capital for a clean-tech company ever. (The company is also planning to build charging networks in Israel and Portugal...
...Address the problem of including certain minor addiction disorders (caffeine intoxication) but excluding others (compulsive gambling). These are relatively infrequent diagnoses, but they seem highly capricious. Isn't compulsive gambling a sign of a bigger problem? Isn't caffeine intoxication usually an accident? That's one reason the whole category of "substance-related disorders" has chipped away at the authority of the DSM. The new DSM would rationalize the system. There are no plans to change the diagnostic criteria of "caffeine intoxication" (essentially, drinking so much coffee or Red Bull that you go nuts, at least temporarily...
...Many observers saw the exercise as a political ploy - an effort by the conservative government to seduce extreme right-wing voters by fanning nationalist flames ahead of regional elections next month. Other critics said that while discussing French identity isn't objectionable in itself, people used the scores of open debates and the government's online forum to voice opinions that only served to offend public sensibilities. Some have even questioned whether the entire initiative may have backfired, doing more harm to Sarkozy's already tarnished image and undermining his party's chances in the March balloting. Early polls showed...