A new kind of boat is designed to move quickly and stealthily through water by generating a layer of gas around its underwater surfaces.

The design reduces friction by a factor of 900, according to the New Hampshire company that produced the boat. Its smooth speed makes it ideal for special operations. It could also revolutionize shipping.

Juliet Marine recently unveiled the Ghost, a ship it says can reach speeds of up to 60 miles per hour. The shape of the craft is similar to earlier attempts at making watercraft less visible to radar — notably the Navy’s “Sea Shadow” project of the 1980s.

A patent attorney stuffed an iPhone down his girlfriend’s throat during a spat in their posh Upper East Side home, authorities said yesterday.

Brian Anscomb, 37, force-fed the gizmo to his 23-year-old gal pal in their York Avenue apartment early Saturday, bruising and cutting her mouth, court papers say.

It wasn’t his first phone flipout — on July 10, he allegedly cracked her cellphone in half when she tried to call cops during a nasty squabble.

Jason Valdez, 36, took to Facebook via his smart phone during a 16-hour-long armed standoff with SWAT teams at a motel in Ogden, Utah. His first Facebook status update read: “I’m currently in a stand off wit these shady azz niggaz from old, kinda ugly but ready for whatever, I love u guyz and if I don’t make it out of here alive that I’m in a better place and u were all great friends….” Later Valdez posted a photo of himself and a woman he was holding hostage, with the following tag: “Got a cute ‘HOSTAGE,’ huh.”

As bizarre as all this sounds, the surprising thing is how much sense it actually makes (from a criminal’s point of view). Valdez was not only able to use Facebook to communicate with his friends and loved ones; he also received information from a friend warning him about a SWAT team member hiding in nearby bushes and advising him to “stay low.” While this is obviously illegal (I wouldn’t be surprised if the sympathetic poster has been arrested) at the time it may have been very useful to Valdez, allowing him to circumvent the communications blackout usually enforced by police in these situations.

Like most armed standoffs, there was no escape for Valdez in the end: he shot himself in the chest as the SWAT team stormed the motel, and is now in critical condition. His hostage was freed, unharmed, so there is a happy ending to the story.

The SETI Institute has had to retire the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) because it lacks the funding to run the group of radio satellite dishes that search the skies for signs of alien life.

The collaboration between the SETI Institute and the University of California at Berkeley was originally conceived of as a three-tier plan to build 350 radio-wave antennas that worked in concert with the Kepler space telescope to scan the heavens for signs of intelligent life.

But as of last week, the ATA will no longer be performing its regular functions, as scientists were unable to raise the $5m needed to keep the project afloat.

Russian media, including the Moscow Times have been posting reports that the son of Yvegny Kaspersky, head of leading international data security firm Kaspersky Lab, has been kidnapped.

At about 4pm EST on Thursday, the Russian government’s daily paper Rossiyskaya Gazeta published a report which said local law enforcement had confirmed the kidnapping of 20 year old Ivan Kaspersky.

Reports say the kidnappers have demanded a three million Euro ransom for Kaspersky’s return.

The US Patent and Trademark Office awarded IBM an average 16 patents per day in 2010, for a total 5,896. Second-ranked Samsung received 12.5 patents per day, or 4,551 for the year. Not be left out, Microsoft’s daily average was 8.5, or 3,094 per day. So, the three companies awarded the most patents, all from the tech sector, received 13,541 patents, or 37 per day. But wait! There are only 261 days in a typical working year, making the per-day totals for IBM, Samsung and Microsoft much higher: 22.6, 17.4 and 11.8, respectively.

Yahoo Inc.’s holiday trimmings will include 600 to 700 layoffs in the Internet company’s latest shake-up triggered by lackluster growth.

Employees could be notified of the job cuts as early as Tuesday, according to a person familiar with Yahoo’s plans. The person asked for anonymity because Yahoo hadn’t made a formal announcement.

The planned cutbacks represent about 5 percent of Yahoo’s work force of 14,100 employees. It will mark Yahoo’s fourth mass layoff in the past three years.

Portions of the diplomatic cables contained in WikiLeaks are available for sale on Amazon’s U.K. website, an odd twist after the company ousted the organization from its hosting service.

Excerpts from some of the 250,000 sensitive documents were contained in a Kindle e-book self-published by an author listed as Heinz Duthel. The book isn’t available in the U.S.; people in the U.K. can buy it for 7.37 pounds ($11.60).

When Israeli entrepreneur Amit Goffer was paralyzed in a car crash in 1997, he went on a quest to help other victims walk again.

He started wondering why the wheelchair is the only way for the paralyzed to get around, short of being carried.

So he invented an alternative: robotic “pants” that use sensors and motors to allow paralyzed patients to stand, walk and even climb stairs. He founded a company, Argo Medical Technologies Ltd., to commercialize it.

After several years of clinical trials in Israel and the United States, units will go on sale in January to rehabilitation centers around the world.

Argo joins several companies that have developed robotics and exoskeletons in medicine.

Called “ReWalk,” the latest device can help paraplegics to stand and walk - using crutches for stability - when they lean forward and move their upper body in different ways.

The 35-pound (16-kilogram) device, worn outside of clothing, consists of leg braces outfitted with motion sensors and motorized joints that respond to subtle changes in upper-body movement and shifts in balance. A harness around the patient’s waist and shoulders keeps the suit in place, and a backpack holds the computer and rechargeable 3 1/2-hour battery.

When operated, it makes clanging robotic sounds, like the hero of the 1980s cult movie “Robocop.”

A spacecraft has tasted oxygen in the atmosphere of another world for the first time while flying low over Saturn’s icy moon, Rhea.

Nasa’s Cassini probe scooped oxygen from the thin atmosphere of the planet’s moon while passing overhead at an altitude of 97km in March this year.

Until now, wisps of oxygen have only been detected on planets and their moons indirectly, using the Hubble space telescope and other major facilities.

Instruments aboard Cassini revealed an extremely thin oxygen and carbon dioxide atmosphere that is sustained by high-energy particles slamming into the moon’s surface and kicking up atoms, molecules and ions.

Oracle Corp.’s courtroom clash with archenemy SAP AG has paid off handsomely.

A jury on Tuesday ordered SAP to pay $1.3 billion - more than half of its total profit last year - for a subsidiary’s skullduggery in stealing a stockpile of software and customer-support documents from password-protected Oracle websites.

The German software company was caught off guard by the size of the verdict. It had only set aside $160 million for anticipated damages, and already paid $120 million of that to Oracle’s lawyers.

3-D printing has already resulted in advances in manufacturing (as well as tiny stop-motion animation), but now taking it one step further is the Urbee hybrid: the world’s first 3-D printed car, developed by Kor Ecologic and Stratasys.

The Urbee was created using Stratasys’ Dimension 3-D printers and Fortus 3-D Production System. The full-scale prototype is not yet complete, but all of the exterior components, including the glass, will be entirely printed by additive manufacturing – printing layer upon layer of material until you end up with a car in front of you.