The New England Journal of Medicine has published an article that highlights a rare risk of using iPods and other portable electronic devices in bad weather.
A 37-year-old man was brought to the emergency department at our hospital. He had been jogging in a thunderstorm, listening to his iPod, when an adjacent tree was struck by lightning. Witnesses [...]

Listening to iPods at unsafe volumes for as little as 5 minutes a day can cause hearing loss.
Researchers Brian Fligor and Cory Portnuff estimate that a typical person could safely listen to an iPod for 4.6 hours at 70 percent of full volume using the supplied earphones without greatly increasing the risk of hearing loss.
However, [...]

A 56-year-old Japanese national allegedly attacked a 20-year-old jockey from Louisville on Tuesday while traveling on American Airlines Flight 918. The attack resulted in both men being detained by the FBI.
According to FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela, the older man had a strange disposition throughout the flight. He lay down in the aisle and also poured [...]

Persian businesswoman Anousheh Ansari,set to be the first female commercial space tourist, is scheduled to lift off on the Russian Soyuz TMA-9 flight Monday, September 18th.
She plans to blog and podcast from space at a site hosted by Los Angeles-based X PRIZE Foundation.
“I‚Äôm hours away from my flight,” notes Ansari at her Space blog. “It [...]

Apple is recalling over a million laptop batteries because of risk of overheating, explosions and fire. Recent Mac laptops have had problems with overheating and there have been reports of Mac laptops exploding into flames.The affected batteries were sold worldwide from October 2003 through August 2006 for use with 12-inch iBook G4, 12-inch PowerBook G4 [...]

Doctors in the UK are warning that using an cell phone, iPod or other portable electronic device in a thunderstorm could lead to lethal lighting shocks.According to a letter in the British Medical Journal, the effects of electrocution are likely to be more severe as the metallic components of phones and portable music players act [...]