JOE SADLEK/AP PHOTO

Hip-Hop for Homework. Konami Digital Entertainment Inc. of Tokyo announced on 25 January that West Virginia's public schools will soon offer required courses based on the company's popular video game "Dance Dance Revolution." In the game, a song with a pulsating beat plays, and arrows on a video screen tell players where to step so it will appear that they are dancing in time with the music [see photo]. The state hopes that a daily regimen of the game's computerized choreography will reverse a growing incidence of childhood obesity.

Missle Defense Hit. Evaluating U.S. plans for a missile defense shield, an 18 January report from the U.S. Congressional Research Service concluded that there is "no conclusive evidence of a learning curve over more than two decades of developmental testing."

Course Correction. It's been widely anticipated that a technique called immersion lithography would be needed to make SRAM chips with features 45 nanometers across. However, Intel Corp. says it has extended the usefulness of its so-called dry lithography equipment with phase-shift photomasks and other techniques, and that it may skip immersion altogether if extreme ultraviolet lithography is ready for high-volume production when Intel begins making chips with 32-nm features.