Remember the news about the satellite that the US lost contact with back in late January? Well, someone believes that it might be harmful to denizens of planet Earth once it re-enters after all. The Pentagon's top brass that think shooting it down is the best way to stop NROL-21, the recon satellite, from burning up in the atmosphere and releasing its poisonous rocket fuel.

*UPDATE*: They're gonna shoot it. And they've probably launched now!

The relationship between monkeys and videogames go back a long way. While them hairy critters usually starred or otherwise appeared in games, a recent report from CNN shows that monkeys - or at least, their cousins the great apes - are also benefiting from video games.

Researchers at Zoo Atlanta are currently studying the cognitive skills of two Sumatran orangutans by watching them play computer games.

"The more we understand about orangutan's cognitive processes, the more we'll understand about what they need to survive in the wild," said Tara Stoinski, manager of conservation partnerships for the zoo. "It enables us to show the public how smart they are."

According to CNN, the orangutans use a touch screen built into a tree-like structure that blends in with their zoo habitat. The games that the orangutans play were designed by volunteers from IBM. The games, which took almost 500 hours to develop, test the animals' memory, reasoning and learning, spitting out sheets of data for researchers at the zoo and Atlanta's Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, a partner in the project.

Elliott Albers, from the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, said that researchers hope to use the data to learn more about the orangutans' socializing patterns, such as whether they mimic others or learn behavior from scratch through trial and error. They also hope to use their findings to develop new and more effective conservation strategies to help the 37,000 orangutans living in the wild on the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra.

Imagine a totally wireless future. We're not just talking about wireless internet and stuff, too. When we say wireless, that includes the power cords that are connecting your PC to your electric socket, giving it power so that you can read these words on this website right now.

It sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, but startup company Powercast is already starting to make leaps and bound in this field of research. According to a report from CNN Money, Powercast and its first major partner, electronics giant Philips, are already set to launch their first device powered by - brace yourself - electricity broadcast through the air. Here's how it works:

It may sound futuristic, but Powercast's platform uses nothing more complex than a radio--and is cheap enough for just about any company to incorporate into a product.

A transmitter plugs into the wall, and a dime-size receiver (the real innovation, costing about $5 to make) can be embedded into any low-voltage device. The receiver turns radio waves into DC electricity, recharging the device's battery at a distance of up to 3 feet.

The first joint product from Powercast and Philips is a wirelessly powered LED light stick which will hit the market this year. Powercast says it has also signed deals to develop products with more than 100 companies, including major manufacturers of gadgets ranging from cell phones and MP3 players to medical implants.

PCs and laptops could also be added to the list of Powercast-powered devices in the future. Right now, PC power consumption is still too high for the Powercast to handle, but these consumption rates are rapidly dropping.

Well, it sure looks like that a lot of people have reserved front row seats for the recent lunar eclipse show. CNN reports that stargazers were thrilled by the total lunar eclipse. At the Croydon Observatory in southeast London, about a dozen people - young and old - have gathered to watch the show. According to Paul Harper, the Chairman of the Croydon Astronomical Society, the eclipse was "really very dark...and it was quite a nice one".

Other spectators are really excited about it too. A 60-year-old architect compared the deep red color of the moon to the planet Mars. He says he felt excitement and he mentions that "it's like having the red planet on your doorstep". A young Cub Scout, on the other hand, said "I've never seen anything like it before. I'm really excited."

Cloudy conditions over most parts of Europe didn't faze the event as a variety of Webcasts carried the event live and astronomers urged the public to not miss out on the show. Residents of East Asia saw the eclipse for quite some time as it was cut short by moonset. Those in the eastern parts of North and South America were also able to see it.

Eastern Australia, Alaska, and New Zealand missed out on the lunar eclipse. But on August 28, they'll be in for a treat since another lunar eclipse is set to happen and they have front row seats to it.

If you were following the science headlines last November, you'd be able to recall that it was found that Resveratrol, an ingredient in red wine, demonstrated that it kept overfed mice from gaining weight, turned them into the equivalent of Olympic athletes, and blessed mice with a slowed aging process.

Yeah, super-soldier serum for mice.

A report over at CNN reveals that Sirtis Pharmaceuticals, a biotech startup, is getting major funding, around US$ 82 million, because of its goal to develop medicines that have the same health-boosting effects in people that Resveratrol had on mice.

Sirtis is already clinically testing its first drug based on resveratrol that promises to keep diabetic patients' blood sugar under control. The drug contains concentrated resveratrol and is more effective at getting it into the bloodstream than drinking red wine.

What's noteworthy here is that most biotech firms pioneering new science takes years before testing drugs on people. Sirtis' drug reached the clinic less than 18 months after the company's launch.

Here's proof that it's easier to get support if you're promising a fountain of youth.

When a word like "addiction" is pasted right after the words "internet" and "game", you know it's not going to be all that great. This new article on CNN discusses addiction to using computers and consoles, with a Stanford study recounting just how bad addiction to computing (rather than computers) can get.

Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, head of the Impulse Control Disorders Clinic of the Stanford University School of Medicine, mentioned how their earlier poll of people got to them.

As Aboujaoude notes in the article,

We are seeing more people who lost their jobs because of too much time spent surfing the Internet during work. More relationships are breaking up because of spouses sneaking out of bed to check e-mail in the middle of the night.

While this does seem specifically pointed towards just surfing the net, you have to remember that game consoles are also computers, technically speaking. Previous reports have mentioned that symptoms of addiction have shown themselves when gamers play, and let's not forget the personal accounts of people who've gotten attached to World of Warcraft.

While computer use still doesn't have the "mental illness" tag on its head, the symptoms do happen to be there. Gaming might be good for us in moderation, if one study is to be believed, but fostering good relationships outside individual pieces of tech will definitely help to keep gaming a venue to have fun rather than a place to get a fix.

There's no CNN in space to cover an event like this, SMART-1 only sent still pictures, and the telescopes on Earth are too far away. It's too bad we couldn't really see SMART-1 hit the moon. But that's why there are computer simulations, in this case, these two from ESA. So if you're through checking out SMART-1's final image transmissions in our other report on this lunar mission, then check below for simulations of how SMART-1's final flight may have looked like - from its own eyes.