Location, Location, Location... Scientists review geographic factors to learn why wealth concentrates predominantly in temperate zones. In 1990, 35 percent of the world's population lived on 1 percent of the ice-free land according to data from SEDAC, the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center operated by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University.

Don't Lose Contact... KEEP IN TOUCH: Ever Changed Your E-mail Address? Don’t Lose Touch! Veripost, an e-mail change of address service, makes it easier for you to stay connected with family, friends and e-mail newsletters after an E-address change. You control who gets your address, for free

SpamCon Foundation... Unsolicited email ("spam") forces unwanted and objectionable materials into our mailboxes, impairs our ability to communicate freely, and costs Internet users billions of dollars annually. The SpamCon Foundation protects email as a viable communication and commerce medium by supporting measures to reduce the amount of unsolicited email that crosses private networks, while ensuring that valid email reaches its destination.

Rules fight over FBI cyber-spying... Government officials might agree among themselves that snooping technology should meet one legal standard rather than another, but given the inroads into personal privacy likely to result from eased controls, a public debate seems in order.

Human Spare Tires... Spare tires, according to the U.S. National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (CDC), are responsible for more than 300,000 premature deaths each year in the United States. Reducing the prevalence of these dangerous objects is not, as researchers have found, an easy task. Central obesity (referred to, in slang, as a human spare tire) refers to the buildup of adipose storage inside and surrounding the abdominal region of the body. This excess fat, in many cases, changes body shape and increases risks for associated chronic diseases.

Anything you code can and will be used against you ... It looks like the now-infamous case of until recently jailed Russian software developer Dmitry Sklyarov was just the beginning of a broader trend to cast IT professionals in the role of info cop. Software developers like Sklyarov and even help desk and system administration workers, it appears, are being deputized to enforce ill-conceived laws aimed at perceived Web-borne threats to society.

The Undefended Airwaves... For more than a decade, cryptographers have possessed strong encryption techniques that could virtually guarantee that data falling into the wrong hands—through a stolen laptop, say, or an intercepted radio signal—would be impossible to decode. Unfortunately, these techniques have not made it from the lab into the mainstream.

J. Edgar's Finest At Their Worst... One family’s ordeal at the hands of the FBI, which fingered the wrong man in its quest to unmask a spy, upending the lives of the CIA officer and his three children for the next two years. The accusations leveled in August 1999 prompted the CIA to suspend the officer for 21 months. He remained under surveillance, and his daughter was denied a promotion. His ex-wife, two sons and two sisters were interrogated at work and at home by FBI agents who cast doubt on the man they thought they knew. Friends and colleagues whispered about the traitor in their midst.