Volunteers swap bodies

Researchers using closed-circuit televisions to create an illusion have made volunteers virtually swap bodies, even making women believe they were in a man's body and vice-versa, states Reuters.

The experiment, reported in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE, on Tuesday, shows it is possible to manipulate the human mind to create the perception of having another body, the Swedish researchers said.

It helps explain how humans understand the limits of their own bodies, said Valeria Petkova and Henrik Ehrsson, of the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm.

Fresh off strong Black Friday sales of its Xbox 360 video game consoles, Microsoft is "cautiously optimistic" about the holiday shopping season, a senior executive said yesterday, reports Reuters.

But things could get tougher next year, said Shane Kim, Microsoft's VP of strategy and business development for the video game business, as the economy gets sicker and people cut back spending even more.

The video game business is on track to grow 20% this year, Kim told the Reuters Media Summit in New York, but "people are not projecting that kind of growth" for 2009.

A British systems administrator, who hacked into US military computers in 2001 and 2002, will have another chance to make his case as to why he shouldn't be extradited to the US, reports PC World.

A High Court judge will decide on 20 January whether another court should review Gary McKinnon's case again, said Karen Todner, his attorney.

McKinnon, of London, was indicted in November 2002 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on charges related to illegally accessing and damaging US government computers. McKinnon maintains he was looking for evidence of UFOs.

Electronic Arts and Gameloft, the world's two largest mobile gaming firms, said yesterday the market was doing well, a day after their next biggest rival, Glu Mobile, warned of soft demand, says Reuters.

Glu Mobile chief executive Greg Ballard said on Tuesday he was cutting both staff and his own salary in response to "increasing economic headwinds facing our industry".

But its rivals said yesterday the mobile gaming sector was doing fine. The mobile games industry expects wider adoption of new platforms, like Nokia's N-Gage, Google's Android and Apple's iPhone, to boost the market next year as they make it easier for consumers to find and buy games.

Brain scientists are asking if all those hours spent online rewire the circuitry of our brains, reports AP.

While violent video games have gotten a lot of public attention, some current concerns go well beyond that. Some scientists think the wired world may be changing the way we read, learn and interact with each other.

There are no firm answers yet. But Dr Gary Small, a psychiatrist at UCLA, argues that daily exposure to digital technologies such as the Internet and smartphones can alter how the brain works.