Cyber criminals are cranking out new weapons at a brisk pace, tailoring malicious software for a spectrum of gadgets including smartphones, tablets, and Macintosh computers, a security firm said.

(Phys.org) -- Developers and end users both have been indicating they are ready to start saying long goodbyes to mouse and keyboard. In this touchscreen generation of mobile users, the big stir among gadget reviewers this week is the announcement by Leap Motion that you can not only say goodbye to mouse and keyboard, but goodbye to touchscreen, too. "That nice LED display remains clean and untouched, as it should be,” says the company. The San Francisco based company has announced it is accepting pre-orders for its new Leap, a small USB peripheral that performs motion control with in-the-air sweeps of hand and movements of fingers. The Leap creates a 3-D interaction space of eight cubic feet to interact with and control software on a laptop or desktop. This gesture-control device for computers is running rings, and orbs, and swirls, and curlicues, around Kinect, the most well known of technologies that help users interact with computers without mouse and keyboard.

(AP) -- Regulators are examining whether Morgan Stanley, the investment bank that shepherded Facebook through its highly publicized stock offering last week, selectively informed clients of an analyst's negative report about the company before the stock started trading.

American Express on Tuesday began letting lovers of Zynga games plant money trees on "Farmville" acreage.

The Internet domain name "revolution" was back in action on Tuesday with the agency in charge of website addresses once again taking applications for online neighborhoods breaking the ".com" mold.

(AP) -- Google has completed its $12.5 billion purchase of device maker Motorola Mobility in a deal that poses new challenges for the Internet's most powerful company as it tries to shape the future of mobile computing.

(AP) -- If you were thinking of picking up a few shares of Facebook last week, when it went public at a price of $38, you might be seriously tempted now that the stock has fallen $7 in two days.

(AP) -- Business software maker SAP AG on Tuesday said it will buy Ariba Inc., which makes Web-based software that connects suppliers and buyers online, for about $4.51 billion.

Facebook has settled a lawsuit alleging the social network improperly used members for advertising purposes without their consent in so-called "sponsored stories," court documents showed Tuesday.

Eugene Polley, who in 1955 invented the first wireless remote control for television, has died of natural causes, his longtime employer Zenith Electronics said Tuesday. He was 96.

US computer maker Dell on Tuesday reported a 33 percent drop in profits in a disappointing quarterly report for former market leader.

Apple has extended its lead as the world's most valuable corporate name with a strong 19 percent increase in its so-called brand value, a survey showed Tuesday.

(AP) -- Aereo, a startup that takes live TV broadcasts and sends them to mobile devices in New York for a monthly fee, has won a partial victory in court over the media companies that are suing it.

(AP) -- The maker of a new DVR that lets consumers zap away broadcast TV commercials at the touch of a button suggested Tuesday that the networks are being short-sighted in opposing the technology.

A new study by civil engineers at MIT shows that using stiffer pavements on the nation's roads could reduce vehicle fuel consumption by as much as 3 percent — a savings that could add up to 273 million barrels of crude oil per year, or $15.6 billion at today's oil prices. This would result in an accompanying annual decrease in CO2 emissions of 46.5 million metric tons.

Catastrophic nuclear accidents such as the core meltdowns in Chernobyl and Fukushima are more likely to happen than previously assumed. Based on the operating hours of all civil nuclear reactors and the number of nuclear meltdowns that have occurred, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz have calculated that such events may occur once every 10 to 20 years (based on the current number of reactors) — some 200 times more often than estimated in the past.

Plans to create the world's first carbon-neutral higher-speed locomotive were announced today by the Coalition for Sustainable Rail (CSR), a collaboration of the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment (IonE) and the nonprofit Sustainable Rail International (SRI). CSR draws on the carbon-neutral solid biofuel research expertise of the University of Minnesota and the modern steam mechanical engineering capabilities of SRI to develop the most powerful carbon-neutral locomotive to date.

A biomedical informatics researcher who tracks dangerous viruses as they spread around the globe has restructured his innovative tracking software to promote even wider use of the program around the world.

(AP) -- The organization overseeing a major expansion of Internet addresses has reopened its system for letting companies and organizations submit proposals.

Tesla Motors said Tuesday it would begin deliveries of "the world's first premium electric sedan" on June 22, slightly ahead of schedule.