Two blockbuster online games are rushing in with Blizzard Entertainment’s “Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm” and Nexon’s “Korean Baseball 2K.”“Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm” is an expansion pack to the military science fiction real-time strategy game “Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty,” which is now available for purchase in Korea, the U.S., Canada, Europe, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and other regions.Blizzard held a launching event in Seoul on Monday to announce the release of the new blockbuster

March 13, 2013

Samsung Electronics and Google Inc. have thrived through their smartphone alliance, fighting their common rival Apple Inc. in the fiercely competitive global IT industry.Since the introduction of its Galaxy S smartphone series, Samsung has grown to become the world’s biggest handset maker, and the majority of the Korean smartphones shipped worldwide are equipped with Google’s Android mobile operating platform.“Samsung is one of our most important partners and we talk to them all the time,” said

March 13, 2013

The Korea Food and Drug Administration declared every Wednesday of the third week of the month as “No Soup Day,” aiming to reduce the nation’s sodium intake. Koreans usually eat meals with soups including “jjigae,” or Korean-style stew, which contains large amounts of salt. The KFDA hopes that the designation of No Soup Day would encourage people to eat less salt.According to a national nutritional survey in 2011, Koreans consume the most salt -- approximately 30 percent of total intake -- from

March 13, 2013

NASA says the Mars Curiosity rover's analysis of a rock sample confirms the Red Planet could have supported living microbes in its ancient past.The analysis identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon -- some of the key chemical ingredients for life -- in the sample Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater, NASA announced at a news conference Tuesday."A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported

March 13, 2013

March 14 will be a big day for both Samsung and fans of the Galaxy lineup, as the Galaxy S4 is set for its first public appearance in New York City.The latest model will be unveiled less than a year after the previous S3 was launched. But the hype has built up so much since it was first rumored that Samsung would be releasing another model ― almost immediately after the S3 came out ― that, for some, the S4 may already seem old. Nevertheless, for those of us still scratching our heads about the s

March 12, 2013

People who give others the cold shoulder or deliberately shun another are equally distressed by the experience, U.S. researchers say.Study co-author Richard Ryan, professor of clinical and social psychology at the University of Rochester in New York, and Nicole Legate, a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester, found having study subjects comply with instructions to exclude another person led most people to feel shame and guilt, along with a diminished sense of autonomy.The study, publ

March 12, 2013

A study suggested that melittin, a toxin found in bee stings, could destroy HIV cells and lead to the development of related drugs. Scientists from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis argued that the potent toxin in bee stings could selectively kill HIV cells if attached to nanoparticles. The melittin attached to the nanoparticles could rip holes in the outer layer of the HIV cells and destroy them, leaving other body cells intact, the research paper claimed. While most anti-HI

March 12, 2013

A dentist was detained by police on suspicions of pulling out a patient’s teeth after a quarrel over a medical bill, a Spanish daily reported Monday.According to ABC newspaper, a 39-year-old dentist from Zaragoza is accused of removing several implanted teeth from a middle-aged female patient in February. The victim -- who was being treated by the doctor for months -- asked the dentist why her bill had amounted to thousands of euros, which led to a heated argument. The dentist then sat her down

March 12, 2013

A fifth of Canada's glaciers could be gone by the end of the century, a casualty of global warming that would drive a 1.4-inch (3.5-centimeter) rise in sea levels, a study found Thursday."Even if we only assume moderate global warming, it is still highly likely that the ice is going to melt at an alarming rate," lead author Jan Lenaerts said in a statement.And "the chances of it growing back are very slim," emphasized the meteorologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.He said the process

March 8, 2013

Emperor penguins allow their outer feathers to actually become colder than the surrounding air in order to minimize heat loss, European researchers say.French and British scientist studying thermal images of penguins in Antarctica said they were surprised to discover the outer feathers that cover most of the penguin's body were actually 7 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the surrounding air."We didn't think a warm-blooded animal could ever have an outer surface temperature that was colder th

March 8, 2013

Water samples from an ancient lake buried under ice near the South Pole contain a type of life not found anywhere else on Earth, Russian researchers say.Bacteria found in probes of water from sub-glacial Lake Vostok do not match any of the 40-plus known subkingdoms of bacteria, Sergei Bulat of the Laboratory of Eukaryote Genetics at the St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute said.“After excluding all known contaminants ... we discovered bacterial DNA that does not match any known species liste

March 8, 2013