Two researchers at the University of Warwick had a look the life spans of 528 Nobel Prize winners and mere nominees in physics and chemistry, and concluded that the winners outlived the losers by 1-2 years.
The authors postulate that winning the elusive prize enhances one’s socio-economic status (SES), which lowers psychological stress levels and in turn reduces [...]

A co-worker here once had a Jaguar XJS - he loved the car, but it was in the shop every few months - the car was beautiful but the reliability sucked. 
Jaguar’s MTBF seems to have improved greatly lately, and if their new C-XF concept unveiled at the 2007 North American International Auto Show ever makes it into production, [...]

Dutch watchmaker Christiaan van der Klaauw seems to have a thing for astronomical watches. The Planetarium 2000, for example, which sells for $23,700, shows the 6 innermost planets as they orbit a tiny sun. Presumably, the orbital times are depicted accurately, and Saturn does indeed take 29.458 years to complete it’s turn around the dial.
Nice [...]

Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun got to spend about 45 minutes using the new Apple iPhone and reports back that that he really, really liked it. His review has several superlatives and many positive comments such as “perfect”, “simplest phone” and “most beautiful display”.
He confirms some details, such as 3rd party apps will not be allowed on [...]

While that old saw re underpromise and overdeliver as a tool for managing customer expectations, always did seem to be true, it now seems to have some theoretical underpinnings as well. The Wall Street Journal is reporting new findings indicate that while the payback for exceeding expectations can be small, the penalty for missing them is greater.
To [...]

Thx to the Commonwealth Bank in Australia we now have a good idea of the cost of the iPod nano 2G in various countries, normalized to US$.
The nano seems to be most expensive in Brazil by far, and cheapest in Canada.
The reasons put forth for the differences include duties & tarrifs, shipping costs as well [...]

LG officially announced the Prada Phone, model KE850, today. LG indicates that they worked closely with Prada SpA on various aspects such as design, user interface and marketing. The nearly-buttonless phone itself will sell for $775, has a 3.2in 240×400 resolution touch-screen, a 2MP camera and measures 99 x 54 x 12 mm and weighs 85 grams…a kind of diminutive [...]

Sony showcased some of their new OLED display panels at CES 2007 recently. The largest model is a super-slim 1080p 27 inch OLED TV at a mere 10mm or just over 1/3 inch deep. 
Sony says that the top 3 features of their OLED display are the 1:1000000 contrast ratio, 100% NTSC color gamut and a peak brightness [...]

Strategy Analytics took 7 well known music phones, threw them at 48 reviewers and asked for their opinions. In a bit of a surprise, the apparent experts voted for the Samsung SGH-A707, aka the SYNC,  as having the best combination of music quality, usability and style & design.
Another surprise was the poor showing of the Sony Ericsson [...]

Nokia introduced their new Internet Tablet, the model N800, at CES 2007 a couple of days ago. Compared to the predecessor product the N770, the N800 gets you a beefier processor (320 MHz, up from 250 MHz) and more memory - but the screen stays at a resolution of 800×480. Oddly, still no PDA/PIM functions.
We’re not [...]