Among the other low-rate gear unveiled this evening by Audiovox comes the RCA RIR205, a tabletop internet radio that may have gotten away with that design in 1992. Instead, we have no option but to recommend this one only for rarely used spare bedrooms, though the built-in AM / FM tuner, WiFi radio streaming (complete with a Slacker song tagging feature) and the integrated support for WeatherBug forecasts are quite nice. Additionally, users can record up to 10 hours of music and other radio programming onto the unit's 512MB of inbuilt memory, and of course, you can set the alarm to wake you with online music or your favorite local sports talk host. Not too shabby for $149.99, but that exterior could use some work.

Denon has launched a pair of tabletop music players with plenty of features, including wireless streaming and the nearly-ubiquitous dock for your iPod. The $500 S-32 can decode MP3, AAC, WAV, FLAC, WMV, and Rhapsody subscriptions, while the $700 S-52 adds a CD player, HD radio tuner, satellite radio support (no mention of which service, although won't that be a moot point soon, anyway?) and a USB port for future expansion. Both players will start rocking your desk in October.

Although improvements on the typical X-ray are being made quite frequently of late, a team of researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder is hoping to make a huge leap forward in the way we're forced to handle these traditionally burdensome machines. In an effort to reduce the size required to install and utilize your average X-ray machine, the crew has purportedly developed a new technique to "generate laser-like X-ray beams" that avoid the existing need for such a "monstrous power source." The end goal is, of course, a tabletop device that can handle uber-high resolution imaging at a fraction of the cost and size of current units. It all starts by using "a powerful laser to pluck an electron from an atom of argon and then slam it back into the same atom," which then bypasses the typical problem of X-ray waves "not marching in step" by sending "weak pulses of visible laser light into the gas in the opposite direction of the laser beam generating the X-rays." The feeble beam reportedly "manipulates the electrons plucked from the argon atoms" in order to perfectly intensify the strength of the process by "over a hundred times." Essentially, the researchers have devised a more controlled way to perfect the timing of X-ray blasts, and are utilizing light to focus the process rather than using gobs of energy as it hopes enough undirected beams strike the intended area. Per usual, we've no idea just how close this idea is to becoming ready for the commercial world, but considering all the competition that's currently out there, we don't envision these Buffs wasting any precious time.