Apple is changing the way technology works again, this time it is the iPad, a new tablet device which acts half like an iPhone and half like a laptop. After months of speculation the company’s CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple iPad at its media event in San Francisco.

The iPad is Apple’s attempt to close the gap between cell phones and laptops. The new tablet device comes with an aluminum back and large touchscreen keyboard. It features a modified version of the iPhone OS that allows users to see web pages just as you would on a regular laptop and also plays different types of digital media.

Internally the iPad will comes with a custom 1GHz processor and can be fitted with 16, 32, or 64GBs of storage space. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities are also included.

The renowned Doomsday Clock’s minute hand will be moved January 14th., and for the first time, anyone with Internet access can watch, although the way the hand will move and by how much has not been made public.

The actual clock is housed at the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences offices in Chicago, Ill., but a representation of the clock will be changed at a 10 a.m. news conference at the New York Academy of Sciences building in New York City on Thursday. Watch the live Web feed here.

In 1947, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, which was created by the University of Chicago scientists who helped craft the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, came up with the Doomsday Clock to symbolize changing world events that potentially threaten the world. Their message is that humans are “a few minutes to midnight,” where midnight represents destruction by nuclear weapons, climate change and emerging technologies in the life sciences.

According to the board of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a magazine focused on warning the world of the dangers that the invention of the atomic bomb helped to unleash, the hands of the clock move in response to changing world events, marching forward or back depending on the state of the world and the prospects of nuclear war.

Concerning the board recently is the threat of 27,000 nuclear weapons, 2,000 of them ready to launch within minutes and the destruction of human habitats from climate change.

Since it’s inception, the clock has been moved 18 times. The closest it’s been to Doomsday was in 1953 when the United States and the Soviet Union each tested thermonuclear devices within nine months of one another.

Beginning January 15, McDonald’s Corporate is prepared to offer free Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) service at most of its United States restaurants.

A McDonald’s representative recently told news agency Reuters that free Wi-Fi will be available at about 11,500 of its 14,000 locations.

McDonald’s, the largest fast-food chain in the U.S., currently offers Wi-Fi at an hourly rate of about $1.50.

In a new report conducted by the University of Oxford in England, stored fat cells around the thigh and buttock area may actually be medically beneficial.

“This new article summarizes a body of research showing that such hip and thigh fat can help to reduce the risk of diabetes and heart disease, said lead researcher Konstantinos Manolopoulos. “The review also suggests a mechanism for conveying those benefits.”

According to Manolopoulos and his colleagues in the latest issue of the International Journal of Obesity, although stomach fat is considered more metabolically active than lower body fat, it releases a substance called cytokines, which has been linked to cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance and diabetes. Scientists now think lower body fat, like that around the hips and thighs, produces beneficial hormones that protect against these diseases, although it is yet to be fully determined.

Evidence of this theory includes Cushings syndrome, in which a patient looses their hip and thigh fat while gaining stomach fat. These patients usually have an increased risk of diabetes and heart disease.

“As long as you are female and your hormones are female hormones you are protected from cardiovascular disease,” Manolopoulos said. “The moment you go into menopause and your hormones change, you lose your typical female appearance and you gain stomach fat and at the same time your risk for heart disease and diabetes becomes comparable to men of the same age.”

Drivers who love to tweet will be able to do both simultaneously thanks to the Ford Motor Co. who unveiled their plans for a new Web-connected dashboard system called OpenBeak, which was formerly known as the mobile Twitter application TwitterBerry, at the Consumer Electronics Show.

OpenBeak will be a part of the SYNC platform installed in Fords, Lincolns and Mercurys. Drivers are going to be able to utilize voice commands to have their Twitter messages read aloud. Controls on the steering wheel will skip forward or backward.

Ford is also planning on installing applications for Pandora, the personalized Internet radio service that has more than 40 million users, and for Stitcher, a mobile-audio company that streams podcasts, radio shows and news.

We’re hoping this doesn’t lead to more accidents.

Google is stepping up the ante against smart phones like the iPhone and Blackberry with the release of its own phone the Nexus One. The search engine aims to maintain its online advertising kingdom as individuals continue to increasingly sift through the Internet on smart phones and not PCs.

Employees at Google were the first to receive the device three weeks ago but T-Mobile users will have the opportunity to buy the Nexus One for $179 upon committing to a two-year service contract – the phone’s standard sales price will be $529, which the company will sell directly from a new online store.

Dubbed the first “superphone” by Google, the touch-screen Nexus One is lighter and thinner than other smart phones. The Nexus One is set to offer consumers more ways to “customize the phone’s home page and use voice recognition technology to perform more tasks, including composing e-mails and navigating Google’s mobile mapping products.”

Researchers at the University of Chicago and McGill University have unearthed three new species of prehistoric crocodiles, including a 20-foot croc nicknamed “BoarCroc” (pictured above) because of its three sets of fangs that resemble wild boar tusks.

Unlike their present-day brethren, these species of crocodiles were adept land animals that could stand upright. A second reptilian dubbed “PancakeCroc” due to its flat head was also 20-feet-long and preyed on fish.

The third crocodile named “RatCroc” was a 3-foot-long plant and grub-eater with a pair of buckteeth in its lower jaw used to dig for food. Crocodiles date back about 240 million years, fossils of the animals are found on every continent.

Beginning in 2011, Ford Motor Co. plans to equip Ford Explorers with the newly crafted seat belt-mounted air bags in the back seat, making Ford the first auto manufacturer to mass produce the technology.

Fitting in a pocket sewn into the belt, his safety harness features a cylindrical air bag that stretches from the buckle to the shoulder.

Lead engineer Srini Sundararajan says with the wider belts and bags, crash force is evenly distributed, limiting the chance of injury.

The technology will be expensive but will be initially available as an option, according to Sue Cischke, Ford’s group vice president for sustainability, environmental and safety engineering. Cischke also says these improved seat belts are only a platform to other safety modifications, such as side-curtain air bags and stability control.

Hopefully this will be an improvement on Ford’s 2001 back-seat air bag display at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Drivers complained of the constant rattling of the inflator, which was then located in the trunk.

Planet Earth will one day have a sixth ocean according to an international team of researchers led by Atalay Ayele, professor at the Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia.

A 35-mile rift in Ethiopia’s desert is believed to be the origins of a new ocean. The scientific study, which is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, claims that the processes that created the rift match those happening at the bottom the world’s other oceans, signaling that a sea will likely be birthed in the region.

The rift was created with the volcanic eruption of Dabbahu located at the northern end of the rift. As the magma seeped up along the middle of the crevice it began ripping open the rift in both directions, said the researchers today.

Additionally, the study suggests that highly active volcanic boundaries along the edges of tectonic ocean plates may suddenly fracture into large sections instead of breaking down incrementally as previously believed.

Such sudden large-scale events on land pose a much more serious hazard to populations living near the rift than would several smaller events, says Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester and co-author of the study.

A recent study conducted by researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Missouri-Columbia suggest that small earthquakes that frequently shake the central United States may actually be aftershocks from a few large quakes that occurred about 200 years ago.

The New Madrid Earthquakes between December 1811 and February 1812 are some of the strongest seismic events ever recorded in United States history. Since then, the town of New Madrid, Missouri has shaken with earthquakes, such as the 5.2 quake last year.

“There’s no motion across the fault now, so nothing’s going on, but yet there are still small earthquakes there,” said Seth Stein, the study’s lead author and a professor of geological sciences at Northwestern University. “That fault system seems to be shutting down, and if so, we may be looking at maybe thousands of years before we have [large] earthquakes on that particular fault again.”

The paper will be published in the November 5^th issue of the journal Nature.