The Earth's magnetic poles flip around every 200,000 years or so, with north becoming south and vice versa. Normally, the process takes 4-5,000 years and it ought to be impossible for the flip to be much faster, if models of the Earth's core are correct, but now for the second time evidence has been found of a flip that appears to have taken only a few years.

The first time evidence was discovered of a rapid geomagnetic field reversal was in 1995 when well-preserved lava flows were found at Steens Mountain in Oregon in the US. Research on the rocks by a team led by geologist Scott Bogue of the Occidental College in Los Angeles revealed the lava flow had an unusual magnetic pattern that suggested the magnetic field had been shifting over 10,000 times faster than normal, at six degrees a day. The magnetic patterns are preserved within the magnetic crystals in the lava, formed as the lava flow cooled.

Google on Thursday further embraced the world of tweets, status updates, and on-the-fly posts with a website devoted to finding "real-time" content as it hits the Internet.

A search engine being rolled out in 40 countries at google.com/realtime builds on features that the Internet powerhouse has been adding incrementally to its online query service.

"Real time content is often one of the best sources of information about what is happening right now," Google product manager Dylan Casey told AFP while introducing the new real-time search home page.

"We are giving people more tools to drill down into these results."

In the same manner that Google has search pages devoted to pictures or videos, the new one is tailored to comments, images or other public content fired off at online social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace.

Rice University's Department of Psychology research finds that if you like what you're watching, you're less likely to notice the difference in video quality of the Internet video, mobile movie clip or TV show.

The findings come from the recently released study authored by Philip Kortum, Rice professor-in-the-practice and faculty fellow. The study appears in the journal Human Factors.

"Research has been done asking if people can detect video quality differences," Kortum said. "What we were looking at was how video quality affects viewers in a real way."

According to new research by a Wake Forest University - How positively you see others is linked to how happy, emotionally stable and kind-hearted you are.

Dustin Wood, assistant professor of psychology at Wake Forest and lead author of the study says about his findings: "Your perceptions of others reveal so much about your own personality." By asking study participants to each rate negative and positive characteristics of just four people, the researchers were able to find out important information about the rater's well-being, mental health, social attitudes and how they were judged by others.