The Casimir effect: a force from nothing - What happens if you take two mirrors and arrange them so that they are facing each other in empty space? Your first reaction might be "nothing at all". In fact, both mirrors are mutually attracted to each other by the simple presence of the vacuum. This startling phenomenon was first predicted in 1948 by the Dutch theoretical physicist Hendrik Casimir while he was working at Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven on - of all things - colloidal solutions. The phenomenon is now dubbed the Casimir effect, while the force between the mirrors is known as the Casimir force.

Russian officials claim credit for rain  - A day after acrid smoke from forest and peat fires blanketed Moscow, a light rain Friday cleared the air - and the government claimed the credit. The Emergency Situations Ministry said it drew rain clouds to the smog-shrouded capital and created showers by switching on a cube-shaped piece of equipment, 3 feet on each side, that sits atop a ministry building in western Moscow. It was the first time the ministry used the ionizer, a device developed by its research institute that cranks out electrically-charged atoms. The institute's director, Mikhail Shakhramanian, said the device, a metal cage crisscrossed by tungsten wire, emits a vertical flow of oxygen ions that stirs the air and raises humidity.

Midstate inventor to unveil his 'Back to the Future' car - The rubber meets the road tomorrow for a Middle Tennessee inventor and his car, an all-electric version of the Back to the Future, stainless-steel DeLorean. Carl Tilley of Lebanon has developed a device that an associate, Doug Littlefield, likens to ''a rather elegant battery charger.'' Tilley's innovation allows the gull-winged '81 sports car to run on 12 car batteries without gasoline, Littlefield said.

Maxtor Launches Mega Drives - Two of the drives, the DiamondMax 16 and the DiamondMax Plus 9, have 160GB capacities, using two platters. The DiamondMax 16 spins at 5,400 rpm and costs $249.95. The DiamondMax Plus 9 is faster, at 7,200 rpm, and costs $299.95, according to officials with the Milpitas, Calif., company.

Creative Labs Sells Barebone PCs. Made by Shuttle - The Slix barebone will include a stylish aluminium case, a mainboard and a power-supply unit with the special liquid cooling system. The unique design on this PC allows to use only one cooling fan for the whole system, as a result, Creative Slix should be rather quiet. The company emphasise that its novelty provides such new technologies as USB2.0, IEEE1394 FireWire, onboard LAN, 6-channel audio, integrated 3D-accelerator, etc.

MSN Messenger 5 build 0515 (leaked) - No patch is needed to connect and stay connected. No real visual changes, but the greatest change is that it connects to the msn8 protocol without having to use the known workaround - download&more info.

WinZip E-Mail Attachment Add-On for Outlook Beta Build 5220 - The WinZip E-Mail Attachment Add-On for Outlook makes it easy for you to zip (compress) the files that you attach to Microsoft Outlook e-mail messages. Zipping attachments saves transmission time and disk storage for both the sender and receiver of the e-mail.

Zoom Player 2.80 Final - Zoom Player (changelog) provides special zooming functions to improve TV-Output quality by eliminating overscan. Zoom Player's scaling system allows you to exactly match the video area to your screen's dimensions in real-time with adjustable background color in order to test for brightness bleeds.

Virtual CD v4.3.2 - Virtual CD copies your favourite audio-, data- or video-CD/DVDs as compressed image files on the hard disk and emulates up to 22 CD drives to access and to run the CD applications.

CPUCooL 7.1.3 - CPUCooL version 7.1.3 has been released. What is CPUCool? CPUCooL is a program that monitors temperature, fan speed, and voltages for many motherboards. It provides Cpu cooling under Win9x/2000/XP/NT, allows FrontSideBus changing, optimizes your memory and CPU.

PHP 4.2.3 - PHP 4.2.3 has been released with a large number of bug fixes. It is a maintenance release, and is a recommended update for all users of PHP, and Windows users in particular.

FlashFXP 2.0 RC3 - FlashFXP is the most powerful and popular FTP & FXP Client for Microsoft Windows 9x/Me/NT/2000/XP on the market today. It is loaded with features for the power user, but has an intuitive user interface that takes only minutes to master.

WinACE 2.3 Beta 1 - This beta is now available from the official WinAce website.

HyperSnap-DX 5.00 Beta 2 - HyperSnap-DX 5 is a screen capture and image editing tool for MS Windows. It captures screens from standard desktop programs and even those hard-to-grab DirectX, Direct3D, 3Dfx Voodoo and Glide mode games. HyperSnap-DX 5 can capture frames from many software DVD players and other video playing software.

nVidia Refresh Rate Fix MKII v2.00 E -  nVidia Refresh Rate Fix MKII v2.00 E is a new tool, that supports Detonator 40.41 drivers and fixes the 60 Hz bug, which is very common under XP/NT systems.

NVRefreshTool 2.0 - NVRT2.0 features a few new features, most importantly Detonator 40.41 support. Tried, Tested, True. 100%. Also includes the ability to increment refresh rates by increments of 1, and even has an automatic calculator to determine the TRUE refresh rates for each resolution.

Detonator 30.xx to 40.41 fix - When updating your Detonator Drivers from 30.xx to 40.41 many people have experienced problems with incompatible 30.xx files left on their PC. Jester2K programmed a Detonator 40.41 Fix, it is a quick and easy tool to remove these files. Kinda like detonator destroyer.