And to the disappointment of the greens such as the UN's secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, the rich states' undertaking did not specify any short- or medium-term goals on cutting emissions, over which their leaders could have more control.

ECONOMIST: The G8 and climate change

Out-of-the-box, the LeafPresenter provides small and medium size businesses (SMBs) with a feature-rich mobile ordering and checkout device capable of accepting payments via their choice of processor or next-generation payment methods such as PayPal, LevelUp and other mobile wallets.

ENGADGET: Leaf unveils next-gen LeafPresenter Android POS tablet for taking payments

Unlike rich countries, this argument goes, Latin America may gain more in the medium term by defending its hard-won fiscal stability and relying on the outside world for stimulus.

ECONOMIST: Latin America's economies

So far, the cost of synthesizing and sequencing such very long strands of data-rich DNA as from the book remains too high to make the technique a practical commercial data-storage medium for the foreseeable future.

WSJ: Harvard Researchers Turn Book Into DNA Code