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John Glenn explains to then President Clinton where NASA keeps the aliens in 1998. (credit: NASA)

Some polls have suggested that as many as 50 percent of Americans believe UFOs of extraterrestrial origin have visited Earth, and the percentage appears to be higher among Democratic voters. So perhaps Hillary Clinton was playing to her voters Thursday night when she appeared on Jimmy Kimmel's late night talk show on ABC.

In comments first reported by the Daily Caller, Kimmel mentioned the first thing he would do as president would be to rifle through the Area 51 files with the aim of finding out what the government knows about aliens. He also mentioned he'd asked Bill Clinton about that, and the 42nd president said he had looked and didn't find anything.

"Well, I'm going to do it again," Hillary Clinton said. "I would like us to go into those files and hopefully make as much of that public as possible. If there's nothing there then let's let people know there's nothing there." What if there is something there? "If there is something there, unless it's a threat to national security, I think we ought to share it with the public."

(credit: Geffen Pictures/Warner Bros.)

Whether you prefer to play it safe or wade into risky business for larger payoffs, your decision process may largely depend on a tiny bundle of cells deep in your noggin.

By tagging and tweaking those cells in the brains of high-rolling rats, researchers were able to turn them from ballsy to cautious decision-makers. More specifically, the rodents switched their preference away from pulling a lever that released a jackpot of sugary treats 25 percent of the time to another lever that served up smaller-sized treats 100 percent of the time.

The finding, published in Nature, backs up previous studies in humans showing that drugs that interfere with those same brain cells can lead to gambling problems. The study also offers a neurological explanation for differences in risk-taking behavior as well as a target for new treatments for gambling addictions.

(credit: US Patent and Trademark Office)

One of the oldest and most profitable patent trolls, Uniloc, has been shot down. Its US Patent No. 5,490,216, which claims to own the concept of "product activation" in software, had all claims ruled invalid by the Patent Trademark and Appeals Board (PTAB).

The process through which PTAB eliminated the patent is called an "inter partes reexam," or IPR. The IPR process, created by the America Invents Act, is an increasingly popular and effective way for defendants to challenge patents outside federal courts.

The PTAB case against Uniloc's patent was filed by Sega of America, Ubisoft, Cambium Learning Group, and Perfect World Entertainment. The board found that every claim in Uniloc's patent was anticipated or rendered obvious by an earlier patent.

Six people have been charged in what prosecutors say was a scheme to hack Connecticut state lottery terminals so they produced more winning tickets and fewer losing ones.

At least two of the suspects have been charged with felonies, including first-degree larceny, first-degree computer crimes, and rigging a game, according to an article published by The Hartford Courant. The suspects allegedly owned or worked at retail stores that produced winning tickets in numbers that were much higher than the state average. Of tickets generated at one liquor store, for instance, 76 percent were instant winners in one sample and 59 percent in another sample. The state-wide average, meanwhile, was just 24 percent. After manipulating the terminals, the suspects cashed the tickets and took the proceeds, prosecutors alleged.

The charges come several months after lottery officials suspended a game called the 5 Card Cash after they noticed it was generating more winning tickets than its parameters should have allowed. The game remains suspended. Investigators say more arrests may be made in the future. Almost a year ago, prosecutors in Iowa presented evidence indicating the former head of computer security for the state's lottery association tampered with lottery computers prior to buying a ticket that won a $14.3 million jackpot.

The site of King Arthur and Guinevere's grave. The grave was brought into the abbey just a few years after the place burned down and the monks were desperate for money to rebuild. (credit: Tom Ordelman)

Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset, England, is the legendary resting place of King Arthur and Guinevere, and for centuries people have visited to see the grave of the mythical fifth-century King of the Britons and his bride. But the reality behind the abbey's claim to fame had little to do with early monarchy. It was mostly about economics.

Archaeology magazine's Jason Urbanus reports on new findings from University of Reading archaeologist Roberta Gilchrist, who heads up the Glastonbury Archaeological Archive Project, an intensive reexamination of 75 years' worth of excavations and discoveries from Glastonbury Abbey, many of which have been stored for decades without any scientific analysis. Gilchrist and her colleagues have found evidence that occupation of the Glastonbury site may indeed date back to the purported year of Arthur's reign in the fifth century, but not due to any mystical connection with the king.

We know for certain that Glastonbury was a thriving community in the seventh century, where Saxon villagers created large furnaces to melt down and recycle Roman glass. Gilchrist's project has confirmed that the glassworks predated the abbey, possibly by centuries, and was one of the largest glass production facilities in England at the time.

Alcatraz prison. (credit: Krystian Olszanski)

Prison phone companies have convinced a court to halt new rate caps on inmate calling for the second time this month.

The first stay was issued March 7 and prevented the FCC from implementing new rate caps of 11¢ to 22¢ per minute on both interstate and intrastate calls from prisons. But the stay—which remains in place while the prison phone companies' lawsuit against the FCC is still pending—did not disturb an earlier "interim" cap of 21¢ to 25¢ per minute that applied only to interstate calls, those that cross state lines. The order also didn't specifically object to the FCC changing its definition of "inmate calling service" to include both interstate and intrastate calls.

Seizing on this ambiguity, the FCC decided that it could impose the interim caps on both interstate and intrastate calls. But prison phone companies Securus Technologies, Global Tel*Link (GTL), and Telmate all asked the federal appeals court to stop the caps from being applied to intrastate calls. Securus Technologies CEO Richard Smith argued that confusion about the rate caps could cause "chaos and confusion" in prisons, threatening security.