A new study claims that bouts of cataclysmic volcanism were experienced by the ancient Earth that buried much of its surface in up to 15 kilometres of lava.

These dreadful episodes of volcanic activity each lasted for around one million years - but the last ended around three billion years ago, and the phenomenon is unlikely to occur again, informs the research from the Australian National University, in Canberra

This week will not just see families joining together for thanksgiving, but even the three brightest objects in the night sky Venus, Jupiter and a crescent moon will crowd around each other for an unusual group shot.

The well known, Far Cry 2 game bundled with its GeForce 9 series of graphics cards is now being offered by XFX. The Indian users will get the game for free with the GeForce 9600GT card, read a press release. A number of features are boasted by the XFX GeForce 9 series that includes Nvidia's physics engine, PhysX; CUDA technology, in order to improve performance in graphical applications and Hybrid Power technology, which saves the power usage by shutting off the graphics card when it is not needed.

A way has been found out by the US researchers which can predict the rate at which ice shelves break apart into icebergs.

Calving events, which are sometimes spectacular occurrences, are a key step in the process by which climate change drives sea level rise.

The Science journal reports that computers do not describe the calving process in much detail. They however, simulate how ice sheets might behave in a warmer world. Till now, the factors that control this process have not been well understood.

The release of the tilt puzzle game called Balance, for Mac, has been announced by Balance Game, Mac Logo Interactive, which the users can enjoy playing by just titling their laptop.

The users can comfortably use the built-in accelerometers of all Apple notebooks including MacBook, PowerBook and iBook models, apart from the mouse and trackpad. In order to play in this game; the players have to tilt the playfield to guide one or more balls between various 3D obstacles to their destinations.

Recently, Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia announced that even after trying hard to grow its market share in Japan, it has not helped in anyways, so the company would soon stop selling its handsets in Japan.

However, Nokia revealed that its luxury Vertu brand would continue being sold in Japan, and would dedicate its Japanese business for research purposes. Other than Nokia, Samsung and LG have been facing a lot of problems in Japan, where the market is primarily dominated by the sophisticated domestic phones.