The BBC's Claire Marshall takes a closer look at how you go about injecting a tree with a prototype fungicide, derived from garlic, as part of the fight against ash dieback.

With the launch of NVIDIA’s Maxwell-powered GeForce GTX 900 series last month, it was immediately obvious that NVIDIA had been able to deal a swift blow to AMD’s product lineup by surpassing AMD’s performance while significantly undercutting their pricing. At the time we were expecting AMD to quickly respond with the necessary price cuts to keep the R9 290 series competitive with the GTX 900 series, but surprisingly even a week later this had yet to happen.

Now a bit over two and a half weeks after the GTX 900 series launch, we’re finally seeing Radeon R9 290 series pricing fall in response to NVIDIA’s launch. AMD has not announced an official price cut at this time – and admittedly neither AMD nor NVIDIA tend to announce reactive price cuts – so it’s not clear whether this is AMD’s doing, board partner’s, retailers, or most likely all three. But regardless, retail video card prices at Newegg and other etailers have seen some substantial drops that help bring back at least some balance between AMD and NVIDIA’s high end video card lineups.

A number of Radeon R9 290 cards can now be found for around $300 after rebate, with a couple more factory overclocked models at $310. With HIS, Sapphire, PowerColor, Asus, and XFX represented, this is a broad selection of vendors with a bit less than half of Newegg’s stock now at or around $300. Meanwhile R9 290X can be found for $399, again with a wide selection of vendors and roughly half of Newegg’s stock at or near that price. The remainder of Newegg’s stock in turn generally consists of heavily overclocked or otherwise premium cards that carried their own price premium before these latest cuts.

Speaking of AMD card prices, it should also be noted that AMD’s Never Settle Forever bundle is still active even after this round of price cuts. AMD and their partners will be continuing to try to influence the value proposition of their products by including free games.

For AMD these price cuts don’t come a moment too soon, and while they are going to help the competitive landscape I’m not convinced this is the last time we’re going to see AMD cut prices. As we discussed in our review of the GTX 970, comparing stock-to-stock, the $329 GTX 970 is every bit as fast as the now $400 R9 290X. If AMD wants to be price/performance competitive with NVIDIA then there’s still an additional $70 price difference between the two cards, a gap further muddied by AMD’s game bundle and NVIDIA’s superior energy efficiency. Strictly speaking $400 may not be low enough for the R9 290X, but no doubt AMD wants to see what sales are like at $400 before cutting prices on their single-GPU flagship any further.

The R9 290 on the other hand is in an interesting spot. At resolutions below 2160p it trails the GTX 970 by around 10%, but then again at $300 it’s also priced about 10% lower.  Since it ships at a lower clockspeed than R9 290X a lot of AMD’s partners also goose the core clock on R9 290, which improves performance a bit but isn’t enough to close that 10% gap. What it does mean however is that at least so long as energy efficiency is not a concern, R9 290 is appropriately priced for its performance. However if energy efficiency is a concern, then AMD doesn’t have any kind of counter to GM204 at this time.

If anything the one wildcard at this point is the availability of the new GeForce cards. Despite stock more-or-less holding up immediately post launch, we’ve seen both the GTX 980 and GTX 970 go out of stock in the last week. As of the time of this writing it looks like Newegg has received their Tuesday shipment, so there is stock available, but it’s a thin selection of just a few different cards (including a model or two at MSRP). For prospective buyers this means either playing inventory games or grabbing the AMD alternative, and for AMD this is all the more reason not to cut prices too drastically while GeForce availability is still limited. As for NVIDIA it’s been a while since we’ve seen them capacity constrained on the high end, so while it’s solid evidence that they’ve done everything right with the GTX 900 series launch, it does mean that they’re also going to be leaving sales on the table until supply and demand level out.

Fall 2014 GPU Pricing Comparison AMD Price NVIDIA Radeon R9 295X2 $1000     $550 GeForce GTX 980 Radeon R9 290X $400     $330 GeForce GTX 970 Radeon R9 290 $300   Radeon R9 280X
Radeon R9 285 $250   Radeon R9 280 $200 GeForce GTX 760

Islamic State continue their fight for Kobane but coalition airstrikes restrict their advance into the town on the Turkey-Syria border.

Corona del Mar High School in Newport Beach, California. D. Ramey Logan

Timothy Lance Lai, a Southern California tutor accused of orchestrating a group of Corona del Mar High School students to install keyloggers on their teachers’ computers, has finally been arrested after more than eight months of being on the lam. Lai's keylogging ring aimed to alter student grades at the school, but he is now being held at the Santa Ana Jail in Orange County.

Lai was arrested late Monday after arriving at Los Angeles International Airport, and he was promptly charged with one felony count of second degree commercial burglary and four felony counts of computer access and fraud, according to the Newport Beach Police Department. The police also noted that if Lai is convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of five years and eight months in jail.

Previously, Lai was wanted as a person of interest by local police but had not been formally charged with a crime. There also wasn't a warrant for his arrest. The police did execute a search on Lai's home in December 2013, seizing a number of items, including hard drives, flash drives, and school materials.

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The BBC's Tulip Mazumdar, who has been reporting from Ebola-stricken Sierra Leone, explains how the BBC is covering the crisis safely.

The above controller/adapter bundle will set you back nearly $100 when Smash Bros. finally hits the Wii U on Nov. 21.

Nintendo certainly took its sweet time to announce the release date for the last undated major console release of the year, but our long wait is finally over. The game officially known as Super Smash Bros. for Wii U will be coming to North America on November 21, just in time for the holiday sales rush to start on Black Friday, November 27. Europe will be getting the game on December 5, followed by Australia and Japan on December 6.

For the record, only four of the 58 Nintendo-published games on the Wii or Wii U had their release dates announced less than 46 days before their eventual release (there are currently 45 days until November 21), meaning Nintendo waited almost as long as possible to confirm the release date. On its release, Smash fans will have waited 1,263 days since Super Smash Bros. for Wii U was first publicly announced on June 7, 2011, by far the largest such gap in Nintendo history.

The release date announcement follows the release of the 3DS version of the game over the weekend in Europe and North America, and that first portable Smash is already a huge success. Nintendo announced sales of more than 2.8 million copies worldwide. To put that number in context, Nintendo had sold just over three million Wii U hardware units in the Americas as of June 30, and best-seller Mario Kart 8 hit two million worldwide sales on the Wii U after about a month on sale.

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The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope NASA

As we've recently discussed at length, dark matter is likely to be a WIMP: a weakly interacting massive particle. Weakly interacting doesn't mean no interactions, though, and there's always the chance that dark matter particles will collide with something else. Since dark matter is also the most common matter in the Universe, there's a good chance that the "something else" will be another dark matter particle. And if the collision results in the destruction of dark matter particles, it should produce a spray of things we can see, like energetic particles and photons.

On its own, these collisions will be too rare to detect. But summed over large regions of the sky, we might be able to detect the collective output of many collisions. This has led to a number of astronomical dark matter searches, some of which have claimed to observe puzzling excesses of high-energy photons. Yet for each one of these results, there have been other researchers who have suggested that the champagne bottles reserved for the discovery must be quietly put back to chill longer.

Why so many on-again, off-again discoveries? A review published in PNAS explains why looking at high-energy photons has been so difficult, and it describes what our prospects are for making one of these discoveries stick.

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A single week of Soylent contains seven meal pouches and seven oil containers. Total weight is just about 10 lbs (4.5 kg). Lee Hutchinson

Soylent, the slushy slightly sweet meal supplement/replacement from California engineer Rob Rhinehart and his company Rosa Labs, has by most accounts been a smashing success story. We tried it and liked it a year ago. While we wrote more about why folks might (or might not) want to drink it once it hit its official release, the Rosa Labs development team has continued work even as shipments of the powder leave the factory by the truckload. In an update e-mail yesterday morning, Rosa Labs announced two major milestones: first, that shipments have (finally) been completed to everyone who backed the Soylent crowdfunding project prior to its closure, and secondly, that Soylent is getting its first major update to version 1.1.

It seems a little weird that food (or "food") has a version number, but Rhinehart always intended Soylent to be a product that changed over time based on feedback and market forces. In a quick post on the official Soylent blog, Rhinehart explains that the bump to 1.1 brings with it a decrease in the product’s sucralose level, dialing down the release version’s vague sweetness to a more truly neutral taste. The logic here, explains the post, is that it’s easier to add sweetness than to take it away, and many Soylent 1.0 users have expressed a desire to flavor the product with add-ons (peanut butter is a popular one, as is blended fruit).

The second change deals with my biggest issue with Soylent—what can be politely termed as "a bit of gas." Regular Soylent use eliminates the gas, but using Soylent as an occasional substitute for a missed meal—which is my preferred usage of the stuff—can introduce some thunderous gut activity (which I referred to in my original Soylent review as "horse-killing farts").

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Continuing with our GTX 980M/GTX 970M coverage, I expect we'll see press releases and website updates from all of the major notebook vendors today or very soon, as all of them add the GeForce GTX 980M and 970M to their configurators. In order of when I received the news, here's a short list of vendors offering GTX 980M/970M notebooks.

Origin PC EON and EVO15-S

Origin tends to offer very high-end configurations with some customization options that you won't find at "lesser" vendors, though like most companies they don't actually manufacture the core chassis. Instead, they use "whitebooks" from ODMs like Clevo and MSI and then custom configure the components. For today's launch, Origin is updating their EON line and EVO15-S laptops; they're also looking to add a 4K display option on the EVO15-S. I'd love to see them offer a HighDPI panel on the larger EONs, as the EVO15-S tops out at the GTX 970M and if you're trying to push 4K resolutions on a notebook you'll want every ounce of performance you can find. Anyway, there's not a whole lot to say about their updated offerings, other than you can head over to their GeForce 900M page to configure your notebook.

Gallery: Origin PC EON and EVO

Maingear Nomad and Pulse

Maingear is also updating their notebook offerings, which are based on MSI designs. As such, you can expect to see the same selection of notebooks that we covered in our MSI GTX 900M post. The Nomad 17 is the same core chassis as the MSI GT72, and it will be available with either the GTX 980M or 970M. The Nomad 15 matches up with the GT60 while the Pulse 15 and 17 equate with the GS60/GS70. For now Maingear appears to be focusing on the Nomad 17, which starts at $2100.

Eurocom

Eurocom is the first to send us a complete list of Clevo-based designs with GTX 980M/970M support. Their X3, X5, X7, and X8 will all support the new GPUs, and yes, that means you can order a GTX 980M SLI configuration if you really need every ounce of performance you can squeeze out of a desktop replacement. Eurocom also supports upgrading existing notebooks with the new GPUs, though the cost is often so high that you'd be better off selling your current system and simply buy a brand new notebook instead.

CyberPowerPC

CyberPowerPC is also offering customized builds based on the MSI GS60. The new Fangbook Edge is available in two configurations, a base model with a 1080p display, i7-4870HQ CPU, GTX 970M, 1x8GB RAM, and a 1TB HDD starts at $1689. The second option is a 4K Fangbook Edge with the same specs but with a 3840x2160 display starts at $1799. I'm actually quite happy that the age of quality notebook displays is finally upon us; $120 extra to go from 1080p to 4K isn't all that bad, as I remember several years back when upgrading from a garbage 1366x768 panel to 1080p could cost more than that. As for storage, CyberPowerPC offers a 240GB M.2 Kingston drive for $131, or you can get up to a 1TB 2.5" Samsung SSD if you're willing to pay for it; the $254 500GB Samsung 840 EVO is still the one to beat, and with the fixed firmware coming out it's probably safe to go that route again.

Gallery: CyberPower PC Fangbook Edge

AVADirect

AVADirect is also selling a full line of Clevo notebooks with either GTX 980M or GTX 970M. The current list consists of the Clevo P150SM-A, P157SM-A, P170SM-A, P177SM-A, and P377SM-A. That last one is an SLI configuration, though that seems more than a bit overkill without a 3K or 4K panel to go with it. The base price for the Clevo P377SM-A with a single GTX 980M is $2212 (with only a hard drive for storage), and adding a second GTX 980M increases the price by $638. If that's the standard price for a GTX 980M, it's actually not too bad; now all we need is the ability to buy one and upgrade existing notebooks, which is easier said than done.

Fans of driving games can generally be split into three overlapping groups. There are those who want the most accurate simulation possible, driving virtual cars that feel exactly like the real thing. There are those that want "arcade"-style accessibility, with crazy speeds and crazier turns that don't require perfect technique. Then there are those time trial fiends that just want to dominate the game with the absolute fastest races possible.

DriveClub makes a few nods to those first two groups, but it seems designed to appeal mainly to the third group of time trial fans. If you enjoy challenging friends and strangers to overcome your best driving performance while answering the gauntlet from others, you'll quickly fall in love with DriveClub's deeply integrated system of online challenges. If repeating the same track for an hour to earn a place on the leaderboards doesn't sound too appealing, this probably isn't the game for you.

As the name implies, getting the most out of DriveClub involves joining together with fellow players in your own "club" of up to six people. Club members don't actively race together in real time, but they do compete for the common good, representing their club in online challenges. For this reason, it's generally better to be able to form a club with other people you know in real life, but you can jump in to a club with strangers if you want.

Any player can set up an online challenge, on behalf of an individual or club, using an automatically saved recording of a previous race as the basis for the "time to beat." (There are also trials to measure who can perform the best drifts, which is surprisingly fun.) Once a challenge is set, other entrants can dive in and try to beat that time before the challenge expires. If an entrant at least shows up in the Top 7 they will receive some credit for the challenge.

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Every year NVIDIA launches quite a few new products; some are better than others, but they're all interesting. This fall, the big news is Maxwell 2.0, aka GM204. Initially launched last month as the GTX 980 and GTX 970, NVIDIA is hopefully changing the way notebook gamers get treated by launching the mobile version of the GM204 just one month later. We already covered all of the new features in the desktop launch, but now we have specifications for the mobile versions. Read on for a preview of GM204 on notebooks as NVIDIA seeks to close the performance gap with desktops.

As noted in the conclusion of our GTX 980M/GTX 970M launch article, we're going to be covering some of the notebooks that are being announced today in separate Pipeline pieces. MSI has the largest selection of notebooks, with four of their existing products receiving updates to support 980M/970M along with one all-new design, the GT72 Dominator. We'll start with the GT72 Dominator, as it's obviously the most interesting option. There are seven different models of the GT72 being offered, with varying storage, RAM, and GPU configurations. Here's a brief overview of the specs:

MSI GT72 Dominator (Pro) Specifications CPU Core i7-4980HQ (2.8-4GHz)
Core i7-4710HQ (2.5-3.5GHz) GPU NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M 8GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 6GB RAM 12GB up to 32GB DDR3L-1600
(Four SO-DIMM Slots) SSD 128GB to 1TB M.2 SATA
(2-4 SSDs in RAID 0 for 256GB and up) HDD 1TB 7200RPM Optical Super Multi (9.5mm)
BD Burner 9.5mm Display 17.3" Full HD eDP Anti-Glare (1920x1080) Networking Killer Gaming Network
Killer N1525 Combo (2x2 802.11ac + BT 4.0) I/O Ports 6 x USB 3.0
Flash Reader (SDXC/SDHC)
HDMI 1.4
2 x mini-DisplayPort 1.2 Input Steel Series Keyboard
Multi-touch Touchpad Power 9-cell battery
230W AC adapter Extras Full HD webcam (1080p30)
Configurable Multi-colored Backlighting
Anti-Ghost Key OS Windows 8.1 Multi-Language Dimensions 16.85" x 11.57"x 1.89"
(428mm x 294mm x 48mm) Weight 8.4 lbs (3.82kg) MSRP $2000-$3900

Fundamentally, there are two variants: the GT72 Dominator Pro comes with a GTX 980M while the GT72 Dominator comes with GTX 970M. All seven models come with some form of solid state storage (from 128GB with a single M.2 SATA SSD up to 1TB with four 256GB M.2 SATA SSDs in RAID 0), and they all include a secondary 1TB 7200 RPM hard drive. Pricing starts at $2000 for the GT72 Dominator with GTX 970M, while the top configuration tips the scales at nearly four grand ($3900) – obviously, the cost of four 256GB SSDs can add up. Finally, the NVIDIA GPUs seem to have twice the standard RAM on the GT72, so the GTX 970M comes with 6GB while the GTX 980M comes with 8GB GDDR5. These are clearly intended as high-end gaming systems, and the minimum price for a GT72 with GTX 980M is $2400, which will get you a Core i7-4710HQ, 2x8GB RAM, a 128GB SSD, and a Blu-ray burner (along with the other common features listed above).

Note that there have been some significant changes to the GT72 compared to the previous generation GT70 platform, though we haven't reviewed the GT72 (which launched last month) yet. MSI has reworked the chassis and motherboard to provide six USB 3.0 and two mini-DisplayPort 1.2 ports, and the new GT72 chassis also comes with dual cooling fans, which should address one of our biggest complaints with the previous GT70 design. Support for up to four M.2 SATA SSDs is also new. Needless to say, we're definitely looking forward to testing the GT72; MSI provided some photos of the GT72 in the gallery below.

Gallery: MSI Gaming Notebooks with GeForce GTX 980M and 970M

MSI GT60/GT70 Dominator Specifications CPU Core i7-4710HQ (2.5-3.5GHz) GPU NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 3GB RAM 8GB or 16GB DDR3L-1600
(Four SO-DIMM Slots) SSD 128GB or 2x128GB mSATA
(None on base model) HDD 1TB 7200RPM Optical BD Combo
Super Multi (base model) Display GT70: 17.3" Full HD Anti-Glare (1920x1080)
GT60: 15.6" Full HD Anti-Glare (1920x1080) Networking Killer Gaming Network
Intel 7260 (2x2 802.11 ac + BT4.0) I/O Ports 3 x USB 3.0
2 x USB 2.0
Flash Reader (SDXC/SDHC)
HDMI 1.4
1 x mini-DisplayPort 1.2
1 x VGA Input Steel Series Keyboard
Multi-touch Touchpad Power 9-cell battery
180W AC adapter Extras Full HD webcam (1080p30)
Keyboard Backlighting OS Windows 8.1 Multi-Language Dimensions GT70: 16.85" x 11.34" x 2.17"
(428mm x 288mm x 55mm)

GT60: 15.55" x 10.51" x 2.16"
(395mm x 267mm x 55mm) Weight GT70: 8.6 lbs. (3.91kg)
GT60: 7.7 lbs. (3.50kg) MSRP $1600-$2100

Moving on, the GT60 and GT70 Dominator have also been updated with the GTX 970M (but not the 980M). The core differences from the new GT72 are easily summarized. GT70 provides four SO-DIMM slots but MSI only populates two of them on the new GTX 970M models. The SSDs are mSATA and you can get the GT70 with none, one, or two SSDs (and a 1TB 7200RPM HDD). In terms of I/O, there are two USB 2.0 ports, one fewer total USB ports, a VGA port in place of one of the mDP ports, and the chassis is a bit thicker and heavier. MSI doesn't mention multi-colored keyboard backlighting, so it looks like they're going with a standard white backlight. Finally, the AC adapter is only 180W for these models and the WiFi is a standard Intel 7260 module. As for the GT60, there's only one model and it matches the base model GT70 in specs, so it's basically a bit lighter and has a smaller display.

MSI GS60/GS70 Specifications Notebook GS60 Ghost Pro GS70 Stealth Pro CPU Core i7-4710HQ (2.5-3.5GHz) Core i7-4710HQ (2.5-3.5GHz) GPU GeForce GTX 970M 3GB/6GB GeForce GTX 970M 3GB/6GB RAM 12GB or 16GB DDR3L-1600
(Two SO-DIMM Slots) 12GB or 16GB DDR3L-1600
(Two SO-DIMM Slots) SSD 128GB or 2x128GB M.2 SATA 128GB to 3x256GB mSATA HDD 1TB 7200RPM 1TB 7200RPM Optical N/A N/A Display 15.6" Full HD eDP WVA (1920x1080)
15.6" WQHD+ 3K IPS (2880x1620) 17.3" Full HD eDP Anti-Glare
(1920x1080) Networking Killer Gaming Network
Killer N1525 Combo
(2x2 802.11ac + BT4.0) Killer Gaming Network
Killer N1525 Combo
(2x2 802.11ac + BT4.0) I/O Ports 4 x USB 3.0
Flash Reader (SDXC/SDHC)
HDMI 1.4
2 x mini-DisplayPort 1.2 4 x USB 3.0
Flash Reader (SDXC/SDHC)
HDMI 1.4
2 x mini-DisplayPort 1.2 Input Steel Series Keyboard
Click Pad Touchpad Steel Series Keyboard
Click Pad Touchpad Power 6-cell battery
150W AC adapter 6-cell battery
150W AC adapter Extras Full HD webcam (1080p30)
Multi-colored Backlighting Full HD webcam (1080p30)
Multi-colored Backlighting OS Windows 8.1 Multi-Language Windows 8.1 Multi-Language Dimensions 15.35" x 10.47" x 0.78"
(390mm x 266mm x 20mm) 16.47" x 11.29" x 0.85"
(418mm x 287mm x 22mm) Weight 4.2 lbs. (1.91kg) 5.7 lbs. (2.59kg) MSRP $1900-$2300 $1900-$2600

Wrapping up, the GS60 and GS70 have both been updated as well with support for the GTX 970M. There are six GS70 models coming out and four GS60 models, with the GS60 having two 3K variants. The base model on both comes with 12GB RAM and a 3GB GTX 970M and a 128GB SSD; all of the other models have 16GB RAM, but there are options with 3GB VRAM and 6GB VRAM. The GS60 only supports two M.2 SATA SSDs while the GS70 can support three mSATA SSDs, and the top configuration of the GS70 comes with 768GB of SSD storage. The display options on the GS60 trump the GS70, however, as you can get either a wide viewing angle (IPS or similar) 1080p panel or a 3K IPS panel, while it appears the GS70 only has a standard 1080p display – the same display used in the GT70/GT72 most likely.

Kurdish protesters have broken into the European Parliament in the Netherlands. It follows an earlier demonstration at the Dutch Parliament in the Hague on Monday night.

Professor Brian Cox joins a search-and-rescue mission in the depths of winter as they collect two cosmonauts and an astronaut as they arrive back on Earth after months living aboard the International Space Station.

Version:next-20141007 (linux-next) Released:2014-10-07

A mobile hospital ship is been launched on Lake Victoria, bringing medical care to the residents of the area's 3,000 islands.

The besieged town of Kobane in Syria "seems quieter" this morning but a coalition airstrike was heard overnight, reports Paul Adams from just over the border in Turkey.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is depicted as Hercules in a new art exhibition.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto vows to identify and punish those responsible for the recent disappearance of 43 students.

Hey! You there! You've got it pretty good, you know that? While you're sitting there using your Internet-enabled device to read about some other Internet-enabled device, it's easy to forget that the majority of people doesn't have any access to the Internet at all. The "World Wide" Web is actually not that worldwide—only about one-third of the population is online. That's 4.8 billion people out there with no way to get to the Internet.

Bridging this digital divide will be one of the tech industry's biggest challenges—and growth opportunities—over the coming years. As all-encompassing as the Internet feels now, the user base has the potential to triple in size. So as of late, we've started to see Internet companies take an interest in getting more of the disconnected world online. Facebook launched Internet.org, and Google has a ton of projects that aim to provide Internet by fiber, balloon, and drone for example.

CN.dart.call("xrailTop", {sz:"300x250", kws:["top"], collapse: true});But these initiatives are all focused on merely bringing Internet access, not addressing the actual hardware necessary to display the Internet. Enter the Intex Cloud FX, a $35 (Rs 1,999) smartphone from India aimed precisely at this issue. The Cloud FX runs Firefox OS, Mozilla's home-grown OS. Firefox OS is entirely Web-powered, and, therefore, Gecko, Firefox's layout engine, runs just about everything on the device. Apps are built entirely from Web technologies. Think "Chrome OS"—but from Mozilla and on a smartphone.

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