A new study, that involved tracking of recent floods beneath the Byrd Glacier, has claimed that deep beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, floods of water from buried lakes can hurry glaciers along on their slow slide towards the sea. According to Andy Smith of the British Antarctic Survey, who was not involved in this latest study, "It's like putting in a squirt of oil. The water lubricates the base of the glacier."

With the concern to the financial Crisis in the global economy and the quake in Human skills recruitment and utility of Organizations, CII - LM Thapar Centre for Competitiveness for SMEs organized a One Day Workshop on "Executive Programme on Metrics and Balanced Scorecard" at CII (Confederation of Indian Industry), Gurgaon on 15th November. A total of 43 delegates from Top Managerial profiles of various sectors - Service, Manufacturing, IT and Finance reaped benefits out of the highly productive workshop.

Going by the latest figures released, Canada's health care spending is growing faster than the economy, outpacing inflation and population growth. Representing 10.7 per cent of the gross domestic product, health care spending has reached $171.9 billion or $5,170 per person, the highest share ever recorded in Canada.

When it comes to province-wise per-person spending, the figures for Alberta and Manitoba stand at $5,730 and $5,555 respectively. The provinces that spend the lowest are Quebec at $4,653 and British Columbia at $5,093.

In the midst of the launch of the new Windows Live services, which included the update to Games for Windows Live yesterday, the Microsoft Store officially opened for US businesses.

Previously, the company opened at UK, Germany, and Korea, and both hardware and software would be sold by Microsoft. Furthermore, it also offers the option to purchase software, either as physical media or as a download.

The store would instantly provide many versions of Vista (both full versions and upgrades) and Office and its related components.

Thursday witnessed the launch of touch-screen smartphone, ‘Xperia X1’, by Sony Ericson, a 50:50 joint venture between Sony and Ericsson. Carrying a price tag of Rs 44,500, the latest smartphone is equipped with lots of multimedia features. It is basically aimed to serve the needs of the users related to converged entertainment and mobile web communication experience.

Anil Sethi, Sony Ericsson India President, said, “Xperia, aimed to offer energizing communication and premium mobile experience, with the promise of quality and functionality.”

The latest reports have informed that soon, the iPhone users would be able to use their voices to browse the web with the help of a new application from Google.

A well known newspaper has revealed that an online voice search application for Apple’s mobile phone is all set to be launched by the company as early as this week.

This entry of search engine giant with a free iPhone application will prove to be the first venture of the company into voice-based search.