San Francisco - Online retailer and auction house eBay posted a 5-per-cent increase in third-quarter earnings Wednesday but said that the stalling economy would leave its annual revenue well below expectations.

Following the announcement, the company's shares fell 12 per cent in extended trading.

The pioneering website reported net income of 492.2 million dollars, or 38 cents a share, compared with a loss of 935.6 million dollars, or 69 cents a share, in the same quarter a year ago, when the company took a large charge in connection with its acquisition of Skype, the online phone and text-messaging service.

Frankfurt - Sony is to offer its e-book reader, a replacement for paper books, in Germany from the spring of next year, the Japan-based media company said Wednesday at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The Sony Reader device went on sale in the United States in 2006 and in Britain last month.

Sony said it would link with a German book wholesaler, Libri, and a retailer, Thalia, to market the device, which downloads books from personal computers.

London, Oct 15 : Using cheap lenses like those used in CD players, scientists have devised a new way to collide individual photons and atoms, which may revolutionise quantum networks, making them cheaper and easier to build.

Collision of single atom with a single photon is vital for operating many prototype quantum communications methods, including quantum networks and sending data using "spooky action at a distance".

The new technique uses cheap lenses to transfer data between light and matter.

And, according to physicists from Singapore and Germany, the new method that Quantum communications offers theoretically unbreakable security by encoding data into the quantum characteristics of photons.

Washington, October 15 : A study has revealed that metalmark moth caterpillars make home security systems out of silk.

The new finding attains significance because, thus far, spiders were considered to be the only animals to detect tremors in their webs caused by foreign objects.

Researchers behind this discovery have revealed that some caterpillars in the genus Brenthia have the capability to sense disturbances, and that they use threads in their silk shelters like tripwires.

New Delhi, October 15 : China has about 84.5 million people who use their cellular phones to surf the Internet, nearly 30 per cent of the total number of netizens in the country, according to an industry expert.

Yang Zemin, director of the Telecom Research Institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that 68.7 million new cell phone users were registered in the first eight months, bringing the population of mobile users to about 616 million.

He reckoned that the population of Internet users had touched the 275 million mark by the end of September, 85 per cent of whom were broadband users.

He said that the number of fixed-line users was declining, reports the China Daily.

Melbourne, October 15 : Aussie researchers will soon be exploring the possibility of installing solar panels in people’s clothing to generate electricity.

The study will be one of the research projects that are being funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), an agency of the federal government.

The funding will be used to study everything from protecting the Tasmanian Devil from the deadly facial tumour disease to maintaining public health during heatwaves.

There will also be a study about the interactions between humans and robots.