Science and Tech

Here are some questions to ask if you think you are addicted to the Internet:

-- Do you spend excessive time online, or more than you intended?

-- Do you feel more depressed or lonely the more time you spend online?

-- Do you have a heightened sense of euphoria while online or using a computer?

-- Is it interfering with your job or school performance?

Technology can be seductive because it provides an instant reward -- a text message from a friend, success in a video game or stimulating news on a Web site -- that is not necessarily harmful.

But mental-health experts say an addiction can form -- just as with gambling -- when people keep seeking that intermittent, unpredictable reward.

The smell of a volatile chemical exuded by people and birds alike is what draws in the species of mosquito known to carry West Nile Virus, researchers have found.

This discovery at the University of California, Davis could lead to improved efforts to crimp the spread of the disease, said Walt Leal, an entomology professor who led the research over the past three years.

With Apple being all coy about next year's announcement of the Apple Tablet computer, it is time to talk again about convergence.

It is that time of year when people look forward to Thanksgiving, the day-after rush and the shopping season. Let's get right to the letters and see what we can solve for you.

Q. I see you liked the Motorola Droid. You were a big fan of the Samsung Omnia as well. Did you try out the Palm Pre?

Google's latest brainchild, Google Wave, is all the rage among bleeding-edge technology enthusiasts. But some corporate information technology executives say that while they're intrigued by Wave -- a replacement for e-mail, the most widely used of all Internet services -- they're not ready to adopt it.

SAN FRANCISCO - Wanted: Dark-haired HIV-negative men and women to participate in a study designed to measure drug levels in hair.

It's called the "Strand Study" and it's part of a larger effort by AIDS scientists to look at whether people who are HIV-negative can benefit from prophylactically taking anti-HIV drugs to reduce their chances of infection.

Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time

Platform: PlayStation 3

Genre: Platformer

Publisher: Sony

ESRB Rating: E for Everyone

Grade: 4 stars

For a while I was the coolest nerd on the block last week because I had a review unit of Verizon's "Droid" phone on my desk before the official release date.

This prompted lots of visits from long-lost friends and plenty of Star Wars jokes ("This IS the droid I was looking for...") but finally after the flock left I was left with a few days to poke around on the phone myself.

SAN FRANCISCO - Consumers are increasingly relying on humans to help them sift through the huge amounts of news, video, music and other media online, as social networking and old-fashioned editorial filtering promise ever more personalized results.

It's the Internet equivalent of a friend's referral, adding more of a human touch to a medium long dominated by crawlers and algorithms.