Washington, Sept 10 : Food factory work surfaces coated in titanium are better than those of stainless steel, for they can cut the number of food poisoning cases every year, a new study has revealed.

In the food industry, work surfaces need to be easy to clean, but wear of food contact surfaces through abrasion, cleaning and impact damage increases the surface roughness, making it quite difficult to clean the surfaces.

Researchers from Manchester Metropolitan University, UK have examined the way different work surfaces harbour bacteria that could contaminate food and found that titanium coated surfaces can make it more difficult for pathogenic bacteria to attach themselves to the metal.

Paris - The International Energy Agency (IEA) said Wednesday that it has revised downward its forecast of global oil demand for this year and 2009.

In its Monthly Oil Report, issued in Paris, the IEA said the reason was that the global economic slump and high crude oil prices during the summer caused weaker-than-expected oil deliveries in industrial nations.

"The data suggest that the demand impact of weaker economic conditions and high prices during the summer - when oil prices reached an all-time peak - was more marked than expected, notably in the United States," the IEA said.

"Furthermore, the effects of the ongoing hurricane season on US demand are subject to considerable uncertainty."

Berlin, September 10 : An international team o

Apple is all set to launch its new versions of its iPod MP3 music players on Tuesday at a rocking event titled “Lets Rock” at San Francisco. On the other hand, Microsoft, its rival is focusing on its Zune devices to survive in the competition.

All the fans of Apple products, received an email of invitation last week, which read “Lets Rock”, and a colorful outline of a person who is excitingly listening to an iPod.

The other information included in the invitation email, was the time of the press conference and the way to the theatre where it will be held.

Analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in Silicon Valley, informed, “The best bet is they are going to refresh the iPod Touch and the iPod Nano.”

London, September 10 : Scientists at the University of Washington in Seattle have come up with a new scheme that can solve the problem low connection speeds during peer-to-peer (P2P) downloading.

Such problems usually occur when Internet users download P2P content that is stored a long way from their homes, and the online links over thousands of kilometres get tied up delivering it.

The researchers say that their scheme called Proactive Provider Participation for P2P (P4P) can help ease the load.

Their idea is to take the help of Internet service providers (ISPs) in supplying P2P sites with data on the shortest routes between peers.

Washington, September 10 : Tel Aviv University researchers have written a unique software program called the ‘Korset’ that can stop computer viruses from wreaking havoc on the servers running on Linux, the operating system used by the majority of web and email servers worldwide.

Avishai Wool, a professor in the university’s Faculty of Engineering, says that the new software can predict how any insidious program residing inside a computer for months or years after developing immunity to anti-virus solutions should behave in the future.

This advance is significant because most anti-virus companies often take days before their software updates can prepare one’s computer for the next attack.