Melbourne, Apr 14 : IBM worldwide has begun cost cuts in order to battle the effects of the global financial crisis and will scrap office amenities such as tea and coffee, and even company-funded home internet access.

From May 1, IBM will cease to reimburse Internet access for staff working from home. Direct pay corporate managed and contracted home Internet services will also be scrapped.

"IBM will cease the reimbursement of home internet access for employees," The Australian quoted the company, as saying in an email to staff.

Washington, April 14 : Scientists at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham) have come up with a way to convert human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) into neural progenitor cells, which may be ideal for transplantation.

Lead researcher Dr. Alexei Terskikh says that the new method to create these committed neural precursor cells (C-NPCs) does not produce mutations in the cells, and may be useful for clinical applications.

When the C-NPCs created using the Terskikh protocol were transplanted into mice during an experiment, they became active neurons and integrated into the cortex and olfactory bulb.

Washington, Apr 14 : Although laptops are getting smaller and easier to use day by day, they still get overheated causing circuits to melt and the hardware to fail. But, such problems may soon be history.

Thanks to Slava Rotkin, an assistant professor of physics, whose research team have developed a new cooling method for laptops that dissipates heat by overcoming low rate of thermal coupling between carbon nanotubes and substrate.

Jerusalem/Washington, Apr. 14 : Israel and the United States will hold an unprecedented and massive exercise later this year to jointly test three different ballistic missile defense systems, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The exercise, called Juniper Cobra, will be held in Israel and will include the newly developed Arrow 2, as well as America''s THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) and the ship-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System.

The test will likely include the launching of interceptors from these systems.

Hong Kong - Hong Kong people sent 14 times as much mobile data in January than they did in the same month two years ago, according to figures released Tuesday. The rise in the sending of mobile data from phones and hand-held computers also represented a four-fold increase on the figure from January 2008, the territory's telecommunications authority said.

People in the hi-tech city of 7 million are among the world's keenest users of mobile technology to transmit files, images and SMS messages.

Karachi, Apr. 13 : Pakistan’s Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) will launch the country’s first indigenously developed communications satellite on August 14, 2011.

SUPARCO Director Dr. Mohammad Riaz Suddle revealed that the life span of the satellite would be 15 years, and would be launched at a longitude of 38 degrees and at an altitude of 36,000 kilometres above the Earth’s surface.