3D printing offers ability to print physical objects

Soon tables like these will be available to download and print in your home

As Christmas fast approaches, millions will opt to spare themselves the crowded high street and instead settle down in front of the computer and do their shopping there.

Yet buying online has always had one key disadvantage: you have to wait.

Not only that, but the inability to touch a product, try it on, feel how heavy it is or do anything else you would do on your typical high street excursion prevents online shopping being the perfect experience.

But technology is now coming online that could allow you to receive your goods straight away.

As the cost of 3D printing hardware begins to drop, bespoke, printable products may be about to hit the market.

Freedom of Creation is a design and research company exploring the capabilities of what, in the industry, is known as rapid prototyping.

Janne Kyttanen is the company's founder and creative director.

"Imagine the potential of this for the fashion industry," he told Digital Planet on the BBC World Service.

"I can measure your body, in 3D, and I can make you perfectly fitting garments in the future without any sewing and stitching, making the needle and the thread obsolete."

His company is now producing products for companies including Asics, Tommy Hilfiger and Hyundai.

This hook was printed on a RepRap machine

Away from the fashion world, 3D printing has many applications for the developing world.

The ability to produce specially designed objects from a computer offers exciting possibilities for making vital tools in poorer, hard to reach areas.

One scheme that is looking to capitalise in the technology is RepRap, short for Replicating Rapid Prototyping, which offers a cheap way of replicating objects - including the printer itself.

"It's a 3D printer that prints out a kit of parts for another 3D printer," explained Dr Adrian Bowyer from the University of Bath.

"It doesn't print every last single part. There are some which, at the moment, are a little bit difficult for the machine to manage - so things like electric motors and the electronics circuitry the machine can't do for itself - but it prints out a lot of the rest."

In contrast to early 3-D printing machines which cost around £20,000, Dr Bowyer says a RepRap machine comes in at just £300.

And the software and hardware specifications are all open source - meaning the machine can be duplicated freely.

This low barrier to entry has piqued the interest of many entrepreneurs, keen to see how the technology can be effectively deployed.

David Flanders, a technology enthusiast and blogger based in London, has been experimenting with ways to do good with the RepRap machine.

"Imagine I print you a shoe. Your child grows, as they do. You take that shoe, you throw it back in the shredder - the shredder then processes the plastic.

"You scale up your design 0.3% and you've got your child's next shoe. That's the type of imaginative excitement that we really are talking about."

In the past, the ability to print, burn CDs or DVDs have been seen as a serious threat to intellectual property, making the act of piracy easier.

3D printing is no different. Public Knowledge, a Washington-based public interest group "working to defend citizens' rights in the emerging digital culture" referred to the advancements as the "next great technological disruption".

In a paper entitled "It will be awesome if they don't screw it up", Michael Weinberg wrote: "The ability to reproduce physical objects in small workshops and at home is potentially just as revolutionary as the ability to summon information from any source onto a computer screen."

He is now calling on 3D printing entrepreneurs to remain vigilant of policy debates attempts as the technology develops into the mainstream.

UK team begins epic Antarctic crossing

The Winston Wong Bio-Inspired Ice Vehicle will lead two massive Science Support Vehicles

A team of explorers, mechanics and scientists has arrived in Antarctica ahead of an epic attempt to cross the frozen continent by land.

The Moon Regan Transantarctic Expedition hopes to establish a new record for the crossing and will conduct a range of scientific experiments en route.

These include road testing the environmental impact of biofuels in extreme environments and continuously monitoring the effects of low temperatures on their bodies.

The team hopes to make a return journey across the pole between now and the end of the year.

A convoy comprising a propeller-driven scout vehicle and two monster trucks will set off from the Union Glacier landing strip on the continent's western coast.

The aim is to travel via the southern pole and the Transantarctic Mountain Range to McMurdo station by the end of November. They will then make a return journey using the same route.

The expedition is expected to spend some 40 days on the ice and travel some 5,800 kilometres.

Heading up the team are explorers Andrew Moon and Andrew Regan, who will cross the continent along with an assorted crew including mechanics and scientists.

The team will be armed with ice-penetrating radar to spot dangers ahead.

"Some of the crevasses can be a kilometre deep, so obviously if you go down one of those that's the end of it - there's no one to get you out," Andrew Regan told the BBC, before the team departed for the South Pole.

"This time we have a ground penetrating radar, so in the areas where the crevasse fields are, we'll go nice and slow and use the radar just to make sure. But crevasses are the biggest risk."

The group will be testing health monitoring equipment that will continuously and wirelessly transmit information from the crew to a central computer.

They will collect samples of snow to test for trace metals, to track the passage of pollutants within the southern hemisphere.

The crew has also been given specialist training to help them spot potential meteorite samples on the ice.

But perhaps the main scientific mission will be to test the efficiency of biofuels at extreme temperature.

"Biofuels are an interesting opportunity for the future," said Dr Robin North of Imperial College London, who has been working closely with the expedition.

"We're fueling the Winston Wong Bio-Inspired Ice Vehicle on bioethanol. It will be the first biofueled vehicle at the pole.

"And then with these crew vehicles, we're looking at alternatives to kerosene, looking at how we can reduce the overall impact of this type of expedition in future."

Gene therapy 'memory boost hope'

Protein 'plaques' build up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's

A gene therapy technique which aims to ease memory problems linked to Alzheimer's Disease has been successfully tested in mice.

US scientists used it to increase levels of a chemical which helps brain cells signal to each other.

This signalling is hindered in Alzheimer's Disease, the journal Nature reported.

The Alzheimer's Research Trust said the study suggested a way to keep nerve cells in the brain communicating,

Ageing populations in many countries around the world mean that Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia are set to increase.

Researchers at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease in San Francisco believe that boosting the brain chemical, a neurotransmitter called EphB2, could help reduce or even prevent some of the worst effects of the condition.

Their research suggests that the chemical plays an important role in memory, and is depleted in Alzheimer's patients.

One of the most noticeable features about the brains of Alzheimer's patients is the build-up of "plaques" of a toxic protein called amyloid. Over time this leads to the death of brain cells.

However, another characteristic of amyloid is its apparent ability to bind directly to EphB2, reducing the amount available to brain cells, which could in part explain the memory symptoms involved.

To test this idea, they used gene therapy experiments to artificially reduce and increase the amount of available EphB2 in the brains of mice.

When levels of the chemical were reduced, healthy mice developed memory symptoms similar to those seen in mice bred to have a condition similar to Alzheimer's.

Conversely, when the "Alzheimer's" mice were given gene therapy which boosted levels of EphB2, their memory symptoms disappeared.

Dr Lennart Mucke, who led the study, said that his team had been "thrilled" to find this.

"We think that blocking amyloid proteins from binding to EphB2, and enhancing EphB2 levels or functions with drugs might be of benefit in Alzheimer's Disease."

However UK researchers said that the find, while interesting, did not offer a swift answer to Alzheimer's patients.

Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said: "Our brains are hugely complex and understanding how they work and become damaged by diseases like Alzheimer's is a massive task.

"This research adds a piece to the Alzheimer's puzzle and provides new leads for researchers.

"It suggests a way to keep nerve cells in the brain communicating, which is vital for thinking and memory."

But she added: "We don't know yet if these findings will lead to a new treatment for Alzheimer's - that's some way off."

Invasive 'killer' shrimp found at two sites in Wales

The shrimp has spread across western Europe over the past 10 years

A "killer" shrimp that feeds on native counterparts, young fish and insect larvae has been found at two sites in Wales, says the Environment Agency.

The predatory Dikerogammarus villosus alters the ecology of habitats it invades, and can cause extinctions.

It was found in the UK at a reservoir in Cambridgeshire in September.

Environment Agency Wales said it has now been confirmed at Cardiff Bay and Eglwys Nunydd Reservoir in Port Talbot. It is not known how it arrived there.

Originally from the steppe region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, D. villosus has spread across most of Western Europe during the last 10 years.

The alien invader can be as small as 3mm but may grow up to 30mm long, making it much larger than native freshwater shrimp.

Dubbed the killer shrimp by biologists for its appetite, it often kills its prey and leaves it uneaten.

The Welsh Assembly Government has set up an all-Wales group to contain the species as much as possible.

It includes Environment Agency Wales, the Countryside Council for Wales, Cardiff Harbour Authority and the owners of Eglwys Nunydd.

People using the waters are urged to clean and dry equipment when leaving the water to prevent the species from spreading.

Environment Agency Wales director Chris Mills said: "Despite the fearsome name, these are not a threat to people, but the damage they can cause to our environment here in Wales is a very real danger.

"Because of what they eat and the rate that they eat it, it can alter the food chain and our ecosystem by increasing the competition for food and the native species that rely on the insects could go elsewhere.

"We will continue with our monitoring work across Wales to identify any other water recreation spots where they could be to see how widespread the problem has become."

Rainforest collapse kickstarted reptile evolution

The coal forests covered Europe and North America during the Carboniferous

The fragmentation of tropical rainforests 300 million years ago helped pave the way for the rise of the dinosaurs, a new study suggests.

In the Carboniferous period, North America and Europe lay at the equator and were covered by steamy rainforest.

Global warming is thought to have brought about the collapse of these tropical habitats, triggering an evolutionary burst among reptiles.

The work, by a British team, is published in the journal Geology.

The forests that covered the ancient supercontinent of Euramerica are colloquially referred to as the Coal Forests.

The team used fossils to track the course of reptile evolution

They are so called because they accumulated a large amount of peat, which later turned into the coal that is mined today.

Towards the end of the Carboniferous, the Earth's climate is thought to have grown hotter and drier.

"Climate change caused rainforests to fragment into small 'islands' of forest," said co-author Howard Falcon-Lang, from Royal Holloway, University of London.

Dr Falcon-Lang continued: "This isolated populations of reptiles, and each community evolved in separate directions, leading to an increase in diversity."

To reach their conclusions, the scientists studied the fossil record of reptiles before and after the collapse of the rainforests.

They showed that reptiles became more diverse and even changed their diets as they struggled to adapt to a rapidly changing climate and environment.

Professor Mike Benton, from the University of Bristol, said: "This is a classic ecological response to habitat fragmentation.

"You see the same process happening today whenever a group of animals becomes isolated from its parent population.

Reptiles diversified into forms such as Dimetrodon, a top predator in Permian times

"It's been studied on traffic islands between major road systems or, as Charles Darwin famously observed in the Galapagos, on oceanic islands."

His Bristol colleague Sarda Sahney commented: "It is fascinating that even in the face of devastating ecosystem-collapse, animals may continue to diversify."

Amphibians appear to have been hardest hit by the collapse of the rainforests. The relative success of reptiles may have been due to physical adaptations in which they differed from amphibians.

Firstly, the hard-shelled eggs of reptiles could be laid on dry land (most amphibians lay theirs in water). Secondly, reptiles possess protective scales that help them retain moisture (amphibian skin is very permeable to water).

Ball lightning 'may explain UFOs'

A fireball is caught on camera over Brisbane

Some UFO sightings could be explained by ball lightning and other atmospheric phenomena, claims Australian astrophysicist Stephen Hughes.

The scientist has made a detailed study of an unusual event in 2006 when large meteors were observed over Brisbane.

Their appearance occurred at the same time as a brilliant green object was seen to roll over nearby mountains.

Dr Hughes has put forward a theory linking the object - presumed to be ball lighting - to the fireballs.

His idea is that one of the fireballs may have momentarily triggered an electrical connection between the upper atmosphere and the ground, providing energy for the ball lightning to appear above the hills.

He has written up his explanation in a journal of the Royal Society.

Dr Hughes says the extraordinary episode, which occurred during a night of fine weather, is just the sort of happening that might lead some to think they had witnessed UFO activity.

"If you put together inexplicable atmospheric phenomena, maybe of an electrical nature, with human psychology and the desire to see something - that could explain a lot of these UFO sightings," he told BBC News.

Eyewitnesses were asked to draw what they saw. This is how graphic designer David Sawell recalled a fireball

The scientist, who is a senior lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology, initiated the study after being called in by the local TV station to look over and explain photos of the fireballs captured by members of the public on camera phones.

Fireballs are exceptionally bright meteors and are produced by fragments of space rock larger than the sand-grain-sized particles responsible for shooting stars; but like shooting stars they cross the sky at great speed.

It seems at least three individual fireballs were seen on the night of 16 May 2006.

This photo gives a sense of the intense brightness of one of the fireballs

A subsequent survey organised by the university brought forward many more eyewitnesses, including a farmer who recalled seeing a luminous green ball rolling down a slope of the Great Divide, a mountainous ridge about 120km west of Brisbane.

This object described as being about 30cm in diameter appeared to jump over some rocks and follow the path of a metal fence for "some minutes". The farmer said he saw the green object come into view just after a fireball had passed overhead.

He thought at first he was witnessing a plane crash and called the police, but a search the following day found no wreckage.

Ball lightning seems an obvious explanation, says Dr Hughes. These bright, hovering spheres of light are not fully understood. They are known to be associated with thunderstorms, but not always, and there was certainly no electrical storm activity in the vicinity of the Great Divide.

Dr Hughes does not offer a new explanation for the causes of ball lightning, merely how enough energy might have been put into the ground to trigger it.

He proposes that the natural flow of current that exists between the upper-most reaches of the atmosphere, the ionosphere, and the ground was increased by the passage of the meteor that streamed charged particles and other conductive materials in its wake.

The ball lightning was seen to roll down the slope following the line of a wire fence

"Could it be that the meteor descending through the atmosphere, having passed through the ionosphere, actually created a transient conductive connection between the ionosphere and the ground, even if it was only for a few seconds? Was that enough to put charge into the ground, and then with the discharge form some kind of plasma ball above?

"Think of the ionosphere and the ground as the terminals on the battery and you put a wire between those two terminals and current flows, and literally you get a spark."

Other scientists have suggested that charges dissipating through the ground can create balls of glowing ionised gas above it.

Dr John Abrahamson from the University of Canterbury, NZ, championed the idea 10 years ago that ball lightning consisted of vaporised mineral grains kicked out of the soil by a conventional lightning strike, an idea later tested with some success by Brazilian researchers.

He described Dr Hughes' work as "relatively feasible" and something which made "interesting connections".

"There's a long way to go before everyone will be happy and satisfied that we have a full solution," he told BBC News.

Dr Hughes said his publication in Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical and Physical Sciences was intended to start a debate.

"It's not a vigorous theory; it's more a suggestion that may be worth exploring," he said.

Badger vaccine shows promise for tackling cattle TB

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

Badger culling has become a controversial issue - but the vaccine appears promising

Vaccinating badgers could prove a good way to tackle the spread of TB in cattle, according to research.

In a four-year project, UK scientists found vaccination reduced the incidence of TB infection in wild badgers by 74%.

This does not prove vaccinating badgers would reduce the number of cattle catching the disease, they caution.

But they say it could "overcome some of the challenges" surrounding badger culling, which the UK government wants to bring in next year.

"Badger culling as an approach to disease control can be costly, practically difficult and indiscriminate, and remains controversial," they write in the Royal Society's scientific journal Proceedings B.

"Vaccinating badgers may be an alternative or complementary strategy that overcomes some of these challenges."

However, there is general recognition that vaccination will become a much more feasible option once a version is available that badgers can eat - which will not be for four to five years at the earliest.

The current research used an injectable vaccine that was licensed for use earlier in the year, based on the BCG inoculation given to humans.

In Gloucestershire, scientists identified setts inhabited by groups of badgers.

In some setts - randomly chosen - every badger received a dose of BCG. In the remaining social groups, none was vaccinated.

More than 800 badgers were involved in total, and all were tested for tuberculosis infection annually, to see how the incidence of disease might differ between vaccinated and non-vaccinated animals.

"We're really excited about the results, because we didn't design the trial to look at changes in the incidence but to look at the safety of giving animals BCG," said Robbie McDonald, head of the Wildlife and Emerging Diseases team at the Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera).

"All of the safety aspects are fine, and that's why we now have this licensed vaccine - but the exciting thing was we had this strong effect of the vaccine on indicence, a 74% reduction," he told BBC News.

Precisely how the vaccine achieved these effects in the wild is not entirely clear.

Earlier laboratory-based studies showed it did not prevent badgers from becoming infected. However, it might do so in the wild, as the animals are probably exposed to a lower level of disease.

Alternatively, it could slow the rate at which they become ill enough to be infectious, as was observed in the laboratory studies. This would mean each infected animal would be less likely to pass the disease to others.

The acid test of vaccination would be to see whether it reduces the rate of infection in cattle.

Badger vaccination could reduce the need for cattle testing and slaughtering

However, such a trial could take years to conduct and cost millions of pounds; nothing as comprehensive is being planned.

In the meantime, the government intends to push ahead with plans to permit badger culling in England, assuming the results of its current consultation prove favourable.

The Conservatives promised while in opposition to introduce badger culling if elected.

"While vaccination will not be as effective as culling in quickly lowering the TB infection in the badger population, vaccination does have a part to play and our consultation covers how the two might be used together," said a spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

The Welsh Assembly Government also plans a cull in heavily infected areas.

Chris Cheeseman - a badger ecologist and former head of the UK's Wildlife Disease Unit, who is also an author on the Proceedings B paper - said the government should look at its strategy again.

"I think this is extremely encouraging and gives us ground for believing we're on the right track," he said.

"But because Defra is committed to culling, they're focusing on that and I think they see the vaccination work as a distraction, even though it looks likely to prove a more sustainable long-term option.

"They're being pushed by ministers like [Agriculture Minister] James Paice, who seems to be on a mission to cull; but what is their case for culling as a sustainable, effective and cost-effective option?"

Meanwhile, the first season of a government-funded study looking at how vaccines could be deployed in practice has just concluded - also in Gloucestershire - with promising results.

"In the first season, we've seen 541 badgers vaccinated on 93 premises over an area of 90 sq km," said Dr McDonald.

"This isn't an evaluation of the vaccine's impact but to test the practicalities of vaccination - we ended up with more farmers wanting to join than we could cope with."

In parallel, scientists are also working to develop an oral version of the vaccine, which entails giving the active ingredients a protective coating so they are not broken down by stomach acids.

GCHQ technology 'could be sold'

The work of cyber security experts GCHQ is highly confidential

The government's secret listening post GCHQ could sell its technical expertise to the private sector under plans being considered by the government.

Security minister Dame Pauline Neville Jones said ministers were "thinking about" ways in which GCHQ could supply services to private firms.

"It's a live issue," she told the Commons science committee.

Scientists and cyber-security experts are employed at GCHQ, in Cheltenham, to monitor e-mail and phone traffic.

Their work has always been considered top secret, but committee chairman, Labour MP Andrew Miller, asked whether the government was considering the "radical" step of the commercialisation of products, working in partnership with the the private sector.

"You are taking me on to ground, chairman, that we are thinking about," she told the MPs, adding that there were "many ways Cheltenham could supply a service to the private sector".

But she said the government was still considering how that might be funded and what the relationship between private firms and this branch of the security services might be and she could not comment further at this stage.

The top secret Defence Evaluation and Research Agency was privatised by the previous government, and floated on the stock exchange in 2006 as Qinetiq.

Although the cutting edge cyber-security and computer research carried out at GCHQ could potentially generate cash for the government any moves to involve the private sector would have to be handled carefully due to the highly sensitive nature of the signals intelligence material it handles.

'Trillions' of Earths orbit red stars in older galaxies

By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News

Red sky at night: The view from a planet in our galaxy (left) but planets in older galaxies (right) are bathed in a rosy glow from the many red stars in the night sky (artist's impression)

Astronomers say the Universe may contain three times the number of stars as is currently thought.

Their assessment is based on new observations showing other galaxies may have very different structures to our Milky Way galaxy.

The researchers tell the journal Nature that more stars probably means many more planets as well - perhaps "trillions" of Earth-like worlds.

The Yale University-led study used the Keck telescope in Hawaii.

It found that galaxies older than ours contain 20 times more red dwarf stars than more recent ones.

Red dwarfs are smaller and dimmer than our own Sun; it is only recently that telescopes have been powerful enough to detect them.

According to Yale's Professor Pieter van Dokkum, who led the research, the discovery also increases the estimate for the number of planets in the Universe and therefore greatly increases the likelihood of life existing elsewhere in the cosmos.

"There are possibly trillions of Earths orbiting these stars," he said. "Red dwarfs are typically more than 10 billion years old and so have been around long enough for complex life to evolve on planets around them. It's one reason why people are interested in this type of star."

Two-thirds of the observable Universe consists of spiral galaxies (L) like our own Milky Way. The remainder is made up of older elliptical galaxies (R)

The findings also help to account for what astronomers describe as the "missing mass" in the Universe.

The movement of galaxies suggests there is more material in the cosmos than can be observed, so scientists have suggested that some is invisible, referring to it as "dark matter".

Dr Marek Kukula of the Royal Observatory Greenwich (ROG), UK, said: "the discovery of more stars in the Universe means that we might not need quite as much dark matter as we thought to explain how the Universe looks and behaves.

"It also tells us something about how the very first galaxies must have formed from the gas left over from the Big Bang."

And the ROG's Dr Robert Massey added: "Finding red dwarfs in other galaxies is quite something and shows how far we've come with the latest generation of large telescopes.

"If these stars are more common in elliptical galaxies than in our own, it's also consistent with the idea that they have a larger number of older stars than us. The lifespan of red dwarfs is many times longer than that of stars like our Sun."

Africa 'can feed itself in a generation'

The new study says Africa could become a major exporter if leaders show political will

A new book claims Africa could feed itself within a generation, and become a major agricultural exporter.

The book, The New Harvest, by Harvard University professor Calestous Juma, calls on African leaders to make agricultural expansion central to all decision-making.

Improvements in infrastructure, mechanisation and GM crops could vastly increase production, he claims.

The findings are being presented to African leaders in Tanzania today.

The presidents of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi are holding an informal summit to discuss African food security and climate change.

Speaking to the BBC ahead of the meeting, Professor Juma said African leaders had to recognise that "agriculture and economy for Africa are one and the same".

"It is the responsibility of an African president to modernise the economy and that means essentially starting with the modernisation of agriculture," he said.

Global food production has rocketed in recent decades but has stagnated in many parts of Africa, despite the continent having "abundant" arable land and labour, says Professor Juma.
 

He estimates that while food production has grown globally by 145% over the past 40 years, African food production has fallen by 10% since 1960, which he attributes to low investment.

While 70% of Africans may be engaged in farming, those who are undernourished on the continent has risen by 100 million to 250 million since 1990, he estimates.

The professor's blueprint calls for the expansion of basic infrastructure, including new road, irrigation and energy schemes.

Farms should be mechanised, storage and processing facilities built, while biotechnology and GM crops should be used where they can bring benefits.

But what was needed above all else was the political will at the highest level.

"You can modernise agriculture in an area by simply building roads, so that you can send in seed and move out produce," he told the BBC.

"The ministers for roads are not interested in connecting rural areas, they are mostly interested in connecting urban areas. It's going to take a president to go in and say I want a link between agricultural transportation and then it will happen."

He believes there is great scope to expand crops traditionally grown in Africa, such as millet, sorghum, cassava or yams.

He sees areas where farmers will need to adapt to tackle a changing climate - cereal farmers may switch into livestock, he says, while others may chose more radical options.

"Tree crops like breadfruit, which is from the Pacific, could be introduced in Africa because trees are more resistant to climate change."

He also envisages genetic modification playing a growing role in African agriculture, with GM cotton and GM maize, which are already being grown on the continent, just the start of things to come.

"You need to be able to breed new crops and adapt them to local conditions... and that is going to force more African countries to think about new genomics techniques."

George Mukkath, director of programmes at the charity Farm Africa, welcomed the study, but said with many African states investing less than 10% of their GDP in agriculture, politicians had to "put their money where there mouths are".

"It's what we've been shouting about for several years," he said. "African productivity is low. If there's an investment then African farmers are very capable of producing enough food not only to feed themselves but also for the export market."

But Dr Steve Wiggins, a research fellow at a British think-tank, the Overseas Development Institute, said that modest practical changes were preferable to long wish-lists.

"It's perfectly possible to get Africa on a much higher growth rate but I wouldn't have such a long list of things to do, particularly if I thought it was going to pre-empt all government investment," he said. "To make a difference, you don't need to throw the kitchen sink at the problem."

'Super-Earth' atmosphere measured

The planet GJ 1214b is about three times larger than Earth

The atmosphere surrounding a "super-Earth" extrasolar planet has been measured for the first time.

The planet, GJ 1214b, is three times larger than Earth and about seven times heavier, and is the first planet of its kind known to have an atmosphere.

Researchers reporting in Nature have said it appears to have either a dense atmosphere of water steam, or is wrapped in thick clouds like Venus.

More experiments measuring more colours of light will bear out which it is.

The method used could be used on many ground-based telescopes to yield atmospheric data on other exoplanets.

It works by canceling out the disruptive effects of the Earth's atmosphere while that of far-flung worlds is measured from the ground.

GJ 1214b was first discovered just 40 light-years away in November 2009 and has since become a focus for exoplanet research.

"'Super-Earths' are really interesting, they're at the forefront of what's going on in exoplanet research," said Jacob Bean, the Harvard-Smithsonian University Center for Astrophysics scientist who led the research.

"They're an interesting regime because they're defined as being the transition from terrestrial planets like Earth, Venus and Mars, up to the ice giants like Uranus and Neptune."

Dr Bean and his colleagues used the same "transit method" to probe the planet's atmosphere that was used to discover it.

When a planet passes between its host star and the Earth, it blocks some of the star's light - how much light is blocked gives an indication of the planet's radius.

Now the team has used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to see if specific colours of infrared light are blocked; the atmosphere should absorb specific colours that give away the chemicals from which it is made.

From what is known about GJ 1214b, three theories of its composition and atmosphere dominated. It could either be covered in a dense layer of steam, or it could be an icy, rocky world with a hydrogen or helium atmosphere, or perhaps a large rocky planet with a mixture of volcanic gases.

To measure the minuscule differences in light levels between the cases, Dr Bean and his colleagues improved upon a method to eliminate the effect of the Earth's atmosphere.

While studying the light from GJ 1214b during its transit in front of its star, the team detected the "squiggles" of light from a reference star - whose light should remain unchanged.

"You get squiggles on the reference star - those are mainly due to the Earth's atmosphere; you get squiggles on the target that you're looking at - that's also mainly due to the Earth's atmosphere," Dr Bean explained.

"You subtract the two and what you're left with is really what this extrasolar planet is doing."

The results showed, however, that the squiggles left from GJ 1214b did not have any significant absorptions that give away its atmosphere's makeup.

But the featureless data that the team gathered does not mean they cannot make some informed guesses, as Dr Bean explained.

"The most important parameter governing the strength of absorption features is the 'puffiness' of the planet's atmosphere - how extended, how low-density it is, not necessarily the abundance of certain things."

A light, extended "puffy" atmosphere - made of elements like hydrogen - might block more light than a dense one - made of, for example, water - that is drawn more to a planet's surface by gravity.

The denser atmosphere's "low profile" means it is exposed to less light and from Earth appears to absorb less of it.

The results were gathered at the Very Large Telescope

Alternatively, a cloudy atmosphere would scatter all light, regardless of colour, leading to a similarly squiggle-free measurement.

For Dr Bean, that means that GJ 1214b must not be an icy "mini-Neptune" with a hydrogen or helium atmosphere.

But further measurements will be needed before astronomers find out if it has a thin, steamy atmosphere, or has a thicker but cloudier one.

Drake Deming, of Nasa's Planetary Systems Laboratory said the work "opens the door to characterisng these kinds of super-Earth atmospheres".

"We've been seduced by the abundance of exoplanet results into thinking that these are routine measurements, but they're actually extraordinarily difficult," he told BBC News.

"This is certainly the most significant atmospheric exoplanet result in the last year - and a year is a long time in this field."

The next step is to carry out the same measurement using different colours of light, further into the infrared where the distinction can be made; the Spitzer space telescope will do this first, but many groups have GJ 1214b in their sights.

"This is the most interesting exoplanet out there so there are a lot of people focusing on it," Dr Bean said.

"I think in the next year we should have a very clear picture about this planet, with all the different observations people are doing."

Arsenic-loving bacteria may help in hunt for alien life

The bacteria slowly incorporated arsenic into their innermost workings

The first organism able to substitute one of the six chemical elements crucial to life has been found.

The bacterium, found in a California lake, uses the usually poisonous element arsenic in place of phosphorus.

The find, described in Science, gives weight to the long-standing idea that life on other planets may have a radically different chemical makeup.

It also has implications for the way life arose on Earth - and how many times it may have done so.

The "extremophile" bacteria were found in a briny lake in eastern California in the US.

While bacteria have been found in inhospitable environments and can consume what other life finds poisonous, this bacterial strain has actually taken arsenic on board in its cellular machinery.

Until now, the idea has been that life on Earth must be composed of at least the six elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur and phosphorus - no example had ever been found that violates this golden rule of biochemistry.

The bacteria were found as part of a hunt for life forms radically different from those we know.

"At the moment we have no idea if life is just a freak, bizarre accident which is confined to Earth or whether it is a natural part of a fundamentally biofriendly universe in which life pops up wherever there are Earth-like conditions," explained Paul Davies, the Arizona State University and Nasa Astrobiology Institute researcher who co-authored the research.

"Although it is fashionable to support the latter view, we have zero evidence in favour of it," he told BBC News.

"If that is the case then life should've started many times on Earth - so perhaps there's a 'shadow biosphere' all around us and we've overlooked it because it doesn't look terribly remarkable."

Proof of that idea could come in the form of organisms on Earth that break the "golden rules" of biochemistry - in effect, finding life that evolved separately from our own lineage.

Study lead author Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues Professor Davies and Ariel Anbar of Arizona State University initially suggested in a paper an alternative scheme to life as we know it.

Their idea was that there might be life in which the normally poisonous element arsenic (in particular as chemical groups known as arsenates) could work in place of phosphorus and phosphates.

Putting it to the test, the three authors teamed up with a number of collaborators and began to study the bacteria that live in Mono Lake in California, home to arsenic-rich waters.

The researchers began to grow the bacteria in a laboratory on a diet of increasing levels of arsenic, finding to their surprise that the microbes eventually fully took up the element, even incorporating it into the phosphate groups that cling to the bacteria's DNA.

Notably, the research found that the bacteria thrived best in a phosphorus environment.

That probably means that the bacteria, while a striking first for science, are not a sign of a "second genesis" of life on Earth, adapted specifically to work best with arsenic in place of phosphorus.

However, Professor Davies said, the fact that an organism that breaks such a perceived cardinal rule of life makes it is a promising step forward.

"This is just a weird branch on the known tree of life," said Professor Davies. "We're interested ultimately in finding a different tree of life... that will be the thing that will have massive implications in the search for life in the Universe.

"The take-home message is: who knows what else is there? We've only scratched the surface of the microbial realm."

John Elliott, a Leeds Metropolitan University researcher who is a veteran of the UK's search for extraterestrial life, called the find a "major discovery".

The bacteria were found in the salty Mono Lake

"It starts to show life can survive outside the traditional truths and universals that we thought you have to use... this is knocking one brick out of that wall," he said.

"The general consensus is that this really could still be an evolutionary adapatation rather than a second genesis. But it's early days, within about the first year of this project; it's certainly one to think on and keep looking for that second genesis, because you've almost immediately found an example of something that's new."

Simon Conway Morris of the University of Cambridge agreed that, whatever its implications for extraterrestrial life, the find was significant for what we understand about life on Earth.

"The bacteria is effectively painted by the investigators into an 'arsenic corner', so what it certainly shows is the astonishing and perhaps under-appreciated versatility of life," he told BBC News.

"It opens some really exciting prospects as to both un-appreciated metabolic versatility... and prompting the questions as to the possible element inventory of remote Earth-like planets".

The strange whiskered owl had not been spotted for 26 years

A group of twitchers in Peru have caught a rare glimpse of a bizarre-looking bird not seen for 26 years.

The bird-watchers spotted a long-whiskered owlet, a species first discovered in 1976 that has remained largely out of sight since.

The tiny species, Xenoglaux loweryi, has long bristles around its beak, and delicate feathers that extend into whiskers.

Its formal Latin name actually means "strange owl".

The visitors had a once-in-a-lifetime birding experience Sara Lara American Bird Conservancy

The tour group spotted the owlet in the Abra Patricia Reserve in northern Peru, an area of habitat protected by the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) and its partner conservation organisation in Peru, ECOAN.

The long-whiskered owlet is listed as Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, because of its very limited range of approximately 73 square miles.

The bird's habitat is restricted to cloud forests - moist, tropical forests characterised by frequent low cloud cover.

The area it does inhabit is under threat from deforestation, according to the ABC.

Sara Lara, International Programs Director for the ABC, said: "The long-whiskered owlet is nocturnal, only lives in this area, and exists in very small numbers, [so] the visitors had a once-in-a-lifetime birding experience."

"We are now starting to understand more about its habits and hopefully in the future more people will be able to see this, one of the ultimate birds for any birder."

BT to trial one gigabit broadband

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt will speak about the UK's broadband future on Monday

BT has announced plans to trial one gigabit fibre broadband in Suffolk and add 40 rural market towns to its current fibre roll-out.

It said the move would support the UK government's plan to create the best broadband network in Europe by 2015.

It comes as regulator Ofcom reveals that less than 1% of UK homes have a super-fast broadband connection.

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt is due to spell out the UK's broadband strategy next week.

The 1Gb trial in Kesgrave, Suffolk, will begin early next year and is intended to demonstrate the speed capabilities of BT's fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) technology.

BT has been criticised for not offering FTTH more widely. Most of its fibre roll-out will rely on slower fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technology.

Only a quarter of the homes it intends to offer fibre to will be connected using FTTH.

The market towns earmarked for broadband upgrades have not yet be named but BT said it intended to begin offering services from late 2011.

The announcement comes ahead of a speech on the issue from Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

"I will be setting out on Monday how we can do even more to boost broadband roll-out - by stimulating competition and creating an environment in which business can flourish by removing barriers and cutting costs," he said in a statement.

The government is set to provide £830m for firms willing to offer fast broadband services in rural areas, which it will provide "over the course of this parliament and the next".

BT said that if it was to "win funds on that scale" it would be able to provide fibre to 90% of the UK.

Under current plans, its fibre will extend to 66% of the UK.

"We intend to continually push the limits of our super-fast broadband programme in terms of the technology and the geography," said Oliva Garfield, BT's director of strategy.

Poorer nations 'need carbon cuts', urges The Maldives

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

President Nasheed is trying to organise the voice of "climate-vulnerable" countries

Poor countries as well as rich should look to cut carbon emissions, says Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed.

Continuing to equate the need to develop with the right to emit carbon dioxide is, he says, "quite silly".

Mr Nasheed was speaking to BBC News at the launch of a report on vulnerability to climate impacts, which the authors say shows no nation will be untouched.

He said The Maldives has not received any of the "fast-start" finance pledged by Western governments last year.

It is highly unusual for the leader of a developing nation to call on his or her fellows to cut carbon.

The position of the powerful G77/China bloc - which includes most of the developing world - is that Western nations should cut emissions while others should only have to reduce the rate at which their emissions grow.

However, The Maldives and some other developing nations are known to be somewhat disenchanted with the fact that they have to sit inside the same negotiating bloc as countries that want to develop on the back of expanding fossil fuel use, and some that do not want a legally-binding global agreement to constrain emissions.

"When I started hearing about this climate change issue, I started hearing developing countries say 'we have a right to emit carbon because we have to develop'," he said.

"It is true, we need to develop; but equating development to carbon emissions I thought was quite silly.

"There is new technology - fossil fuel is obsolete, it's yesterday's technology; so we [are aiming to] come up with a development strategy that's low carbon."

The Maldives is aiming to become carbon neutral by 2020; and Mr Nasheed sees the low-carbon development strategy, when it is fully developed, as something that could be picked up by larger nations such as China and India.

Mr Nasheed said that investment in clean energy technology in countries such as China should mean they can move away from fossil fuels faster than they have currently pledged - which would, in turn, change their stance towards the UN climate process.

"They have to rapidly increase their investments in renewable energy, and I think they are doing that - and once they'e done it, they're going to say 'right, we need a legally-binding agreement'," he said.

During last December's UN climate summit in Copenhagen, developed nations (headed by Japan, the EU and the US) promised to provide developing countries with $30bn for the period 2010-2 to help them adopt clean technologies and begin to protect themselves against climate impacts.

Much of the money has been pledged to individual countries and projects. But, said Mr Nasheed, none has been delivered.

"None at all; it's a nightmare," he said.

"Governments will always drag things, even when it's pledged, even when it's cited in the budget - you can always drag the issue to the next year, and the World Bank, European Union, Asian Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank and so on - they all have very difficult procurement procedures and it's very, very difficult."

That rich countries must help poorer ones to adapt, with finance, is enshrined in the UN climate convention (UNFCCC) dating back to 1992.

The three-year "fast-start" finance is seen as a key step in turning that concept into reality.

Athena Ballesteros from the World Resources Institute, which tracks progress on climate finance, said that understanding what has been pledged and paid is very complex; but in some places, progress has definitely been slow.

"Many funds are new, and they're still designing the investment programmes, so it's really taking a long time to release the money," she said.

"Where I think money has started to flow is through bilateral channels, because those are open for overseas development aid. But there, the question is whether the money is really new and additional."

If the conclusions of the new report on climate impacts, the Climate Vulnerability Monitor, are correct, much more money will need to be pledged than is currently on the table.

Written by Development Assistance Research Associates (Dara) in conjunction with the Climate Vulnerable Forum - a group of countries that consider themselves at high risk from climate impacts - it seeks to assess the threat climate change poses to individual nations in areas such as human health, economic stress and weather.

The Maldives must wrestle with becoming carbon neutral while needing tourists to fly in

Citing World Health Organization figures, it concludes that as many as 350,000 lives are being lost each year from climate impacts now, rising to one million per year by 2030.

"The rise in temperatures over the last century will be doubled in the next 20 to 30 years alone," said Dara director-general Ross Mountain.

"Damage from weather disasters will increase by over 300%. We shouldn't underestimate what kind of effects an explosive increase like this can have, especially since only the smallest of new extremes is enough to overwhelm a whole community.

"How much more stress do we honestly think places highly vulnerable to climate change like Afghanistan or Somalia can take?"

The 50 countries judged as "acutely vulnerable" include many of the world's poorest, including Burma, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Niger and Senegal.

This, said Mr Mountain, would make achieving the Millennium Development Goals even more difficult.

But some richer nations, such as the US, are judged to have a high vulnerability to economic disturbances caused by climate change.

John Ashton, the UK's special envoy on climate change, said the report could play a valuable role in persuading people and governments to take climate change more seriously; many, he said, were "not as scared as they should be".

"We need to find ways of forcing the evidence into the political imagination.

"The vulnerabilities in some places are much more tangible and more immediate, and to have a mounting and increasingly coherent voice from those countries is extremely powerful."

Russian man pleads not guilty to global spam scheme

Mr Nikolaenko is charged with violating a seven-year-old US anti-spam law, the CAN-SPAM Act

A Russian man accused of operating an e-mail spam business that at times accounted for one third of global spam has pleaded not guilty in a federal court in the US state of Wisconsin.

Oleg Nikolaenko is charged with running a global network of more than 500,000 virus-infected personal computers, in violation of a US anti-spam law.

Mr Nikolaenko asked to be allowed a form of house arrest, pending a trial.

But the judge ordered him held without bail, ruling he was a flight risk.

"He is a citizen and resident of Russia and the government believes, if released, he would seek to return there and the government wouldn't be able to prosecute him," argued prosecutor Erica O'Neil.

The network Mr Nikolaenko is accused of running, called a botnet, used other people's computers infected with malicious code to send out billions of e-mails.

Prosecutors said the computers were capable of sending up to 10 billion e-mails per day.

Some experts say at one point the e-mails blasted out from the network accounted for one in every three spam e-mails sent in the world.

Mr Nikolaenko is charged with violating a seven-year-old anti-spam law, the CAN-SPAM Act, by intentionally falsifying information in commercial e-mail messages and sending a minimum of 2,500 spam e-mails per day.

UK gives £37m to aid overseas farmers on climate change

Mr Mitchell said scientific breakthroughs were needed to develop crops

The government has pledged £37m to help develop farming practices so that poor countries can cope with climate change.

International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said there was an "urgent" need for new crops that could survive floods, droughts and storms.

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research's recent developments include scuba rice, which can survive underwater for two weeks.

The grant will also fund two projects to help existing farming systems adapt.

Just under half of the money is part of the £1.5bn "fast start" funding pledged by the government over three years to help poor countries begin tackling climate change.

According to the Department of International Development, every £1 invested in CGIAR - which supports research into crops, livestock, fisheries, forestry and the environment, and develops new technologies and techniques - leads to a least £9 worth of additional food being produced in developing countries.

Mr Mitchell said: "Scuba rice is just one example of an innovation that has the potential to lift millions of people out of poverty and prevent the extreme hunger caused when crops fail due to flooding.

"The effects of climate change are likely to destroy crops - and livelihoods.

"But thanks to British taxpayers, developments such as scuba rice will help farmers in the world's poorest countries adapt to a changing climate and ensure their communities are fed."

The department said after a 15-day flood in Bangladesh, almost 98% of scuba rice recovered from complete submersion, compared with just 10-12% of the traditional variety.

It is estimated that the release of flood-tolerant varieties of rice could benefit 18 million farming households in Asia.

Government reveals super-fast broadband plans

The government says faster broadband will save taxpayers billions of pounds

Every community in the UK will gain access to super-fast broadband by 2015 under plans outlined today.

The private sector is to deliver broadband to two thirds of the UK. Other, mainly rural, areas will receive public funds to build a "digital hub" with a fibre optic internet connection.

Ministers say they aim for the UK to have Europe's best broadband network.

This will create "hundreds of thousands of jobs and add billions to our GDP", says Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

The government has earmarked £830m for the scheme, with the money coming from the BBC licence fee.

Mr Hunt says the strategy will give the country Europe's best broadband network by 2015 and will be central to economic growth and the delivery of future public services, dependent on quick, reliable access to the internet.

He added that wider access to broadband services also helped "build a fairer and more prosperous society", as well as "saving billions of pounds of taxpayers' money".

A recent study by the regulator Ofcom revealed that fewer than 1% of UK homes have a super-fast broadband connection, considered to be at least 24Mbps.

However, the government does not define the minimum speed it hopes super-fast services will achieve.

"In order to determine what constitutes 'the best' network in Europe, we will adopt a scorecard which will focus on four headline indicators: speed, coverage, price and choice," the strategy says.

"These will be made up of a number of composite measures rather than a single factor such as headline download speed."

Much of the detail of the government's broadband strategy has previously been announced, including how it will be funded and the coalition's desire to see everyone able to access broadband with speeds of at least 2Mbps by 2015.

Labour promised the same minimum speed for everyone by 2012.

But the coalition says that it will now roll together its drive for universal access with its strategy to deliver super-fast broadband.

At the heart of this is a plan to create a "digital hub" in every community by 2015.

"Our goal today is very simple: to deliver a fibre point in every community in the UK by the end of this parliament," Mr Hunt is expected to say when he delivers a speech outlining the strategy at the London headquarters of computer giant Microsoft.

Communities and local operators would then be expected to take on the responsibility for extending the network to individual homes.

The coalition has earmarked £50m of the £830m to pay for trials - particularly in difficult-to-reach areas - to see how it can ensure that super-fast fibre optic broadband reaches these communities in the timescale.

These new trials will run alongside projects in North Yorkshire, Herefordshire, Cumbria and the Highlands and Islands, announced earlier this year.

"We will be inviting local bodies and devolved administrations right across the UK to propose new testing projects in April of next year, with a view to making a final selection in May," Mr Hunt will say.

In his speech, Mr Hunt will also confirm that the government will sell off parts of the spectrum in 2011 that could be used for mobile broadband services.

The strategy was welcomed by the Independent Networks Cooperative Association (Inca), a group of community broadband schemes.

"It is great that the government has taken up the 'digital village pump' idea that has been put forward by a number of broadband champions," said Malcolm Corbett, CEO of Inca.

"This could go a long way to tackling one of the big problems with all rural broadband services - the costs of backhaul - the connection from the community to the internet.

"However, more needs to be done and the strategy misses some obvious opportunities, not least the way that business rates are levied on fibre."

The current regime of levies on fibre installations has been a major bone of contention, with smaller firms claiming they are discriminated against compared to giants BT and Virgin Media.

Inca's view was echoed by Trefor Davies, CTO of communications firm Timico.

"The problem with this is that it is effectively handing the cash to BT because the fibre tax system will make BT the only company able to offer a competitive backhaul," he said.

Both called on government to address the levies and also to ensure that smaller firms had "viable" access to existing infrastructure - such as BT's ducts and poles - that would be used to carry their services.

Without this, they said, small firms would be at "a competitive disadvantage" compared to BT when bidding to provide services.

Mr Hunt said that BT had signaled that it will match the government's £830m of funding if it is awarded the contract to provide the infrastructure for the community hubs.

The firm said that if it was to "win funds on that scale" it would be able to provide fibre to 90% of the UK.

Under current plans, its fibre will extend to 66% of the UK, although only a quarter of this would be the faster Fibre-To-The-Home (FTTH) technology.

The rest is the slower Fibre-To-The-Cabinet (FTTC), similar to the government's "digital hub" plans, which does not guarantee a super-fast fibre connection all the way to a person's home.

Analysis

The coalition started with two challenges - how to get a minimum level of broadband to everyone and how to make sure that parts of Britain didn't get left out as super-fast networks rolled out. Ministers have decided to roll the two tasks together into one; the aim is that those who have missed out so far will leapfrog straight from dial-up to the superfast era.

The onus will be on local authorities to work with community groups and big businesses to work out how to build the digital hub in each place. There's plenty of scope for disagreement there, as rival firms and different technologies bid for the limited pool of cash.

So how does this compare with what the last government was planning? In one way it's less ambitious - the 2012 target for universal coverage has been put back to 2015; in another way more, with a bold target of Europe's best broadband by then.

And how will that be measured? By performance on price, choice, coverage and speed. Britain does well right now on the first three, but is way down Europe's speed league. Getting to the top of the table in five years won't be easy - the likes of Sweden and the Netherlands aren't just going to stand still.

New species of bacteria found in Titanic 'rusticles'

The bacteria were grown from 19-year-old samples taken from the Titanic

A never-before-seen microbe has been found in the wreck of RMS Titanic.

The Halomonas titanicae bacterium was found in "rusticles", the porous and delicate icicle-like structures that form on rusting iron.

Various bacteria and fungi live within the delicate structures - first identified on the Titanic - actually feeding off of the rusting metal.

The find is described in the journal International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

Samples of rusticles from Titanic were gathered in 1991 by the Mir 2 robotic submersible.

The rusticles are delicate, poorly-understood homes for many bacteria

Researchers from Dalhousie University and the Ontario Science Centre in Canada and the University of Seville in Spain isolated the H. titanicae bacteria from those samples.

They sequenced the microbes' DNA before discovering that they constituted a new member of the salt-loving Halomonas genus.

The bacteria are of particular interest because they may shed light on the mechanism by which rusticles form, and thus on the general "recycling" that such microbes carry out on submerged metal structures.

That, the authors point out, has relevance also to the protection of offshore oil and gas pipelines, and the safe disposal at sea of ships and oil rigs.

Egypt shark attacks: Red Sea resorts seek explanation

White tip sharks frequent the Red Sea area

International shark experts are arriving in Egypt to help investigate the attacks off the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh that have baffled local officials.

Scientists agree that such attacks are extremely rare - and that sharks are not the man-eaters depicted in Hollywood blockbusters such as Jaws.

But they will try to determine why the sharks were lured into shallow waters, and what prompted them to carry out a series of attacks that left one person dead and several more injured.

So far, two sharks - an oceanic white tip and a mako shark - have been caught by local fishermen, but experts say there is no evidence so far that either of them are responsible for the attacks.

There is an abundance of oceanic white tip sharks - Carcharhinus longimanus - in the Red Sea. Divers have spoken of diving with oceanic white tips without feeling threatened.

Oceanic white tip shark

• Can grow up to 4m (13ft) long, though usually do not exceed 3m
• One of the most widespread of shark species
• A "pelagic", or open-ocean, shark - so attacks in coastal waters are exceedingly rare
• Although this shark is primarily solitary, it has been observed in "feeding frenzies" when a food source is present
• Once abundant, the oceanic white tip is now classed as "vulnerable"
• It is considered a highly migratory species

Sources: International Union for Conservation of Nature and International Shark Attack Files

But Ian Fergusson, a shark biologist and patron of the Shark Trust, a UK conservation organisation, said the presence of the short-fin mako shark was intriguing.

Oceanic white tips frequent the region but it was unusual for swimmers to encounter them in shallow waters, he said, and it was very rare for shortfin makos to be found in the Red Sea - and exceptionally rare to find them close to shore.

He said the last time a short-fin mako attacked in the area was in 1970s, when a tourist was wounded in an attack off Eilat's reefs.

Mr Fergusson, a regular visitor to the area, said it would not be difficult for a shark to get close to the shore in Sharm el-Sheikh.

"That particular part of the coastline is bordering on deep water. You don't have to go far offshore to find yourself in 500 metres of water. Sharks can get within half a mile of the shore easily. They don't, for example, have to cross reefs to get there."

According to the University of Florida's International Shark Attack Files, there are an estimated 70-100 shark attacks on humans per year, resulting in about five to 15 deaths. Of those, the oceanic white tip is responsible for only a small number.

But the large oceanic sharks were also the main culprits behind countless attacks on sailors and airmen who, after air and sea battles, found themselves adrift in the Pacific during World War II.

So what could have prompted the latest attacks?

There has been speculation that animal carcasses were recently dumped into the Red Sea, not far off the shore. Some reports have suggested the remains could have been thrown overboard by a ship carrying animal cargo.

"If you start dumping carcasses, you couldn't ask for a better way of baiting for sharks," said Mr Fergusson.

David Jacoby, who specialises in shark behavioural ecology at The Marine Biological Association of the UK, agreed that if this is the case, it was likely to be a significant factor in the sharks' behaviour.

"Pelagic, or oceanic, species of shark often feed opportunistically because the open ocean can be a sparse environment for food," he said.

While less is known about the movements and behaviour of the oceanic white tip, compared with some other species, Mr Jacoby offered another possible explanation as to why the sharks might have been in shallow water.

Based on evidence, experts know that in other shark species, larger females move into warmer, shallow waters to either aid gestation - which can be between 9-12 months in white tips depending on the temperature - or to pup, although from what little evidence there is, it seems that oceanic white tips probably pup in the early summer.

"Both species [white tips and makos] rarely encounter people as they spend large amounts of their time in blue water - open ocean," said Mr Jacoby.

"Like other species, the oceanic white tip is opportunistic and can be fairly aggressive. It is hard to speculate why they attack but they might if they felt they were threatened.

"They are not coming specifically to attack humans - they are not seen as a food source. But if a white tip or mako felt threatened, felt cornered by lots of people in the water, or next to a reef, for example, it might display more aggressive behaviour as a defence mechanism.

"They are opportunistic and it could just be a case of people being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Or, he said, they could be cases of mistaken identity - the shark misinterpreting a human for its normal prey.

Mr Jacoby said shiny objects in the water could attract attention from sharks - so if the sharks were already in the area, shiny jewellery might be a trigger.

There has also been speculation that sharks could have have moved to shallow water because of the depletion of local food sources in the area, but Mr Jacoby disagrees with this.

"This would surely have the opposite effect," he said.

He explains that sharks adopt search behaviour aiming to maximise their encounters with food sources. Therefore, there is likely to be a relationship between natural prey distributions - fish, squid etc - and shark distributions, as the sharks generally try and go where the food is.

The last recorded death from a shark attack in Egypt was in June 2009

However, if a potential food source such as carcasses have been discarded close to shore, some sharks would naturally pick up on this and opportunistically feed there. This would increase the numbers of sharks in the area, making interactions with people more likely.

In the past, shark attacks on snorkellers have been blamed on shoddy diving practices such as "chumming" - attracting sharks by throwing solid bait or pouring chum, a mash of fish oil and blood, into the water.

This type of activity aims to attract sharks such as oceanic white tips, which tend to stay out in the ocean.

But Mr Fergusson said he didn't "buy" this theory.

"Recent studies in South Africa have shown that chumming has limited effect on shark behaviour.

"This is partly because these sharks are such migratory species, and mainly because this is a Marine National Park, any feeding is prohibited - anyone found doing it would be arrested and jailed."

He said a more compelling argument could be a continued decline in pelagic fish stocks having an impact on the natural foraging behaviour of certain shark species.

While any degradation to the ecosystem of the local reef wouldn't necessarily affect the oceanic white tip because this is outside of its natural habitat, Mr Fergusson said this could "point to a larger issue of general offshore fishing of tuna and other big fish whittling down and influencing the food chain".

In Egypt, the hunt is still on for the shark that carried out the latest, fatal attack.

Mark Murphy, who runs a scuba diving holiday firm in London, told the BBC that the local authorities would probably aim to have a "quick clean-up of the area".

"There are over four million visitors a year to the Red Sea and there hasn't been a single incident within the last five years," said Mr Murphy.

"I am saddened that the Egyptian government has decided to slaughter sharks indiscriminately. Over 70 million sharks a year are killed by humans and they are an essential part of the marine ecosystem."

In any case, according to US-based shark expert Samuel Gruber, finding the predator or predators would be extremely difficult.

Fossils of the bird were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores, a place previously famed for the discovery of Homo floresiensis, a small hominin species closely related to modern humans.

The stork may have been capable of hunting and eating juvenile members of this hominin species, say researchers who made the discovery, though there is no direct evidence the birds did so.

The finding, reported in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, also helps explain how prehistoric wildlife adapted to living on islands.

Tall and heavy

The new species of giant stork, named Leptoptilos robustus, stood 1.8m tall and weighed up to 16kg researchers estimate, making it taller and much heavier than living stork species.

Palaeontologist Hanneke Meijer of the National Museum of Natural History in Leiden, the Netherlands, made the discovery with colleague Dr Rokus Due of the National Center for Archaeology in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Finding large birds of prey is common on islands, but I wasn't expecting to find a giant marabou stork Palaeontologist Hanneke Meijer

They found fossilised fragments of four leg bones in the Liang Bua caves on the island of Flores.

The bones, thought to be belong to a single stork, are between 20,000 to 50,000 years old, having been found in sediments dating to that age.

The giant bird is the latest extreme-sized species to be discovered once living on the island, which was home to dwarf elephants, giant rats and out-sized lizards, as well as humans of small stature.

"I noticed the giant stork bones for the first time in Jakarta, as they stood out from the rest of the smaller bird bones. Finding large birds of prey is common on islands, but I wasn't expecting to find a giant marabou stork," Dr Meijer told the BBC.

No wing bones were found, but the researchers suspect the giant stork rarely, if at all, took flight.

Instead, the size and weight of its leg bones, and the thickness of the bone walls, suggest that the now extinct stork was so heavy that it lived most of its life on the ground.

It is thought to have evolved from flying storks that colonised the relatively isolated island.

Map showing the location of the Liang Bua caves on the island of Flores

"Flores has never been connected to mainland Asia and has always been isolated from surrounding islands. This isolation has played a key role in shaping the evolution of the Flores fauna," says Dr Meijer.

Many species on the islands evolved into either giants or dwarfs.

This phenomenon is known as the 'island factor', and is thought to have been triggered by few mammalian predators being on the island. That led to abundant prey species becoming smaller, and other predators becoming larger.

"Larger mammals, such as elephants and primates, show a distinct decrease in size, whereas the smaller mammals such as rodents, and birds, have increased in size," explains Dr Meijer.

Among the giants evolved the giant stork, and the giant rat, Papagomys armandvillei, as well as Komodo dragons, the largest surviving species of lizard.

Dwarf species included the dwarfed elephant, Stedgodon florensis insularis, and the human species , popularly known as the 'hobbit' H. floresiensis.

BIG BIRDS More pictures of the leg bones of the now extinct giant stork (pictured above) can be viewed at the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society (subscription required) Remains of the earliest known pelican, including a preserved beak, were discovered earlier this year in France Watch video of modern storks and other long-legged wading birds

Indeed, the remains of the giant stork were found in the same section of cave as the remains of H. floresiensis.

Discovered in 2004, H. floresiensis is thought to be a new human-like species standing just 1m tall, which survived until 12,000 to 8,000 years ago.

It is thought to be descended from a prehistoric species of human - perhaps H. erectus - which reached island South-East Asia more than a million years ago.

"The status of this human contemporary has been subject of intense debate since its discovery," says Dr Meijer. "But in my opinion, the associated fauna is crucial in understanding the evolution of H. floresiensis."

The distinct difference in size between the 1.8 m-tall giant stork L. robustus and 1m-tall the tiny hominin H. floresiensis raises some interesting questions.

Would the hominin have eaten the giant stork?

Direct evidence of H. floresiensis 's diet is hard to come by, but it is suspected of hunting animals on the island for meat.

However, modern marabou storks mainly eat carrion, but they do take fish, frogs, and small mammals and birds.

So would the giant stork eaten the hominin?

A modern, smaller marabou stork (Leptoptilos crumeniferus)

"Whether or not this animal may have eaten hobbits is speculative: there is no evidence for that," Dr Meijer told the BBC.

"But can not be excluded either."

The giant storks towered over the hobbits.

More importantly, juvenile hobbits were no bigger than giant rats that existed on the island, which themselves may have fallen prey to the giant stork, she adds.

As yet is it unclear why the giant stork, and the pygmy elephants and hobbit hominins, went extinct.

"But we have several clues," says Dr Meijer.

"All the bones of the giant marabou as well as those of the pygmy elephants and the hobbits are found below a thick layer of volcanic ash," suggesting a recent volcanic eruption.

"Second, the giant marabou and its contemporaries go extinct right before modern humans appear at the cave."

Around 15,000 years ago, the climate of Flores went from dry to being wetter, and a combination of any of these factors may have been enough to drive species on the islands to extinction.

Birds of America sets £7m sales record at Sotheby's

Only 119 complete copies of The Birds of America are known to exist

A rare copy of John James Audubon's Birds of America, billed as the world's most expensive book, has sold for more than £7m at auction.

The copy, which comes from the collection of Lord Hesketh, had been expected to fetch up to £6m.

Only 119 complete copies of the 19th-century book are known to exist, and 108 are owned by museums and libraries.

A separate edition of the book on ornithology sold for a record-breaking price of $8.8m (£5.7m) a decade ago.

It contains 1,000 life-sized illustrations of almost 500 breeds and took wildlife artist John James Audubon 12 years to complete.

He did so by travelling across America, shooting the birds and then hanging them on bits of wire to paint them.

The artist then went to Britain to print the volumes and targeted the rich to buy copies.

London dealer Michael Tollemache, who bought the copy at the Sotheby's auction, said the book was "priceless".

Lord Hesketh's collection also included a rare copy of Shakespeare's First Folio, which Sotheby's said was "the most important book in all of English Literature".

Of the 750 that were probably printed, only 219 are known to exist today.

The copy, which dates back to 1623 and has three pages missing, sold for £1.5 million.

It is one of only three textually complete copies to exist in private hands in a comparably early binding.

The Virunga Massif is home to most of the world's mountain gorillas

The population of endangered mountain gorillas has increased significantly in the last 30 years, say researchers.

A census carried out in the Virunga Massif - where most of the world's mountain gorillas live - revealed 480 individuals living in 36 groups.

Conservationists say that, 30 years ago, only 250 gorillas survived in this same area.

Along with the 302 mountain gorillas from a census in Bwindi in 2006, the world population is now more than 780.

The Virunga Massif includes three contiguous national parks: Parc National des Virunga in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in Uganda.

The only other location where mountain gorillas exist is Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda.

A 2003 census estimated the population in Virunga at 380 individuals - so the current figure suggests that the population has increased by just over 25% in the last seven years.

More on mountain gorillas from BBC Wildlife Finder

Conservationists say the increase is thanks to that a collaborative "transboundary" effort by organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda to protect the gorillas and their habitat.

But, according to the African Wildlife Foundation and International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP), the animals are still very much under threat.

A joint statement from the two organisations reported that a recent five-day patrol in the Virunga Massif discovered and destroyed 200 poachers' snares.

Poachers typically do not target mountain gorillas, but the snares they set are a still a threat.

Director of the IGCP Eugene Rutagarama said: "Collectively, we cannot let down our guard on the conservation of these incredible animals.

"While mountain gorillas are physically strong, they are also incredibly vulnerable."

'Lightfoil' idea shows light can provide lift

Time-lapse images show the progression of the "lightfoil"

Just as air causes lift on the wings of an aeroplane, light can do the same trick, researchers have said.

The effect, first shown in simulations, was proven by showing it in action on tiny glass rods.

Like the aerofoil concept of wings, the approach, published in Nature Photonics, works by making use of the radiation pressure of light.

The results are of interest for steering "solar sails", a spacecraft propulsion based on the same force.

Each photon - or packet of light - carries its own momentum, and this "lightfoil" works by gathering the momentum of light as it passes through a material.

This radiation pressure has been considered as a fuel-free source of propulsion for long-distance space missions; a "solar sail" gathering up the momentum of the Sun's rays can get a spacecraft up to a significant fraction of the speed of light.

But until now, no one thought to use the pressure in an analogue of an aerofoil, said Grover Swarzlander of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

"Here at RIT we have a group that... do ray tracing through objects to render computer graphics stuff all the time," he told BBC News.

"So I said let's just turn this problem onto one of these ray-tracing programs and see what happens."

The team ran computer simulations based on a semi-cylindrical glass rod to see what would happen when a beam of unfocused light was shone on it.

They discovered not only that the rods experienced "lift", but that there were several angles that the rod tended to align itself to.

"The surprising thing from our model shows it has different positions of rotational equilibrium, so it will roll to a given position, stay there, and continue to undergo lift," Dr Swarzlander said.

• Light coming in from the left passes through the glass "lightfoil"
• Some passes straight through the back surface, while some is reflected and exits through the bottom (white arrows)
• This change in the light particles' momentum is balanced by another force: lift (blue arrow)

The team went on to design tiny glass rods, less than a hair's breadth across, to prove the principle.

The rods were floated in water, through which a laser was shone. They behaved just as the simulations had predicted.

Given the widely known radiation pressure effect, the discovery of optical lift may be most surprising in that no one had come to this conclusion before.

"They've designed experiments very able to exploit the optical forces that one knows exist, but exploit them in a way so that a collective movement was induced," said Ortwin Hess, an optical researcher at Imperial College London.

"This 'optical lift' is a nice analogy," Professor Hess told BBC News.

"One of the problems with solar sails is that they're not always aligned in the most toward (starlight) at a given moment so... self-alignment based on those elements would certainly have a big advantage."

The effect may also be of interest for things even smaller than the tiny glass rods of the group's experiments.

Dr Swarzlander said his group will continue to optimise the shape of their lightfoils, and then "try to go in the microscopic regime, to see if we can tether small particles - biological tissue for example - to these light foils and drag them along".

Bizarre hairy fly is rediscovered

Scientists are unsure how the insect is related to other flies

Scientists have rediscovered a bizarre insect in Kenya, collecting the first Terrible Hairy Fly specimen since 1948.

Since then, at least half a dozen expeditions have visited its only known habitat - a rock cleft in an area east of Nairobi - in search of the fly.

Two insect specialists recently spotted the 1cm-long insect, known as Mormotomyia hirsuta, living on the 20m-high rock.

They point out that it looks more like a spider with hairy legs.

The fly was found by Dr Robert Copeland and Dr Ashley Kirk-Spriggs during an expedition led by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE).

"The rediscovery of the species, which has been collected on only two occasions before, in 1933 and 1948, has caused excitement in insect museums world-wide," the team members said in a statement.

The insect - found in only one location in Kenya - is covered in yellow hairs

Unable to fly and partial to breeding in bat faeces, the fly is thought to live only in the dank, bat-filled cleft of the isolated rock in Kenya's Ukazi Hills.

It also has non-functional wings that resemble miniature belt-straps, and tiny eyes.

Dr Copeland of the Nairobi-based ICIPE said the fly's physical appearance had left scientists bamboozled about where exactly it belonged in the entire order of Diptera, or "true flies".

"We have collected fresh specimens for molecular analysis to see where exactly the Terrible Hairy Fly fits into the evolutionary process," Robert Copeland told Reuters news agency.

"The fly has no obvious adaptations for clinging onto other animals for transfer from one place to another. With its long legs, it could perhaps wrap itself around a bat and get a ride... but it's never been found elsewhere."

But he added: "Since Mormotomyia cannot fly, there is a strong possibility that it is really restricted to this tiny habitat."

George Stubbs picture fetches £10m at Sotheby's auction

Brood Mares and Foals had been privately kept since the 18th Century

A painting by British master George Stubbs has sold for a record £10m at auction at Sotheby's in London.

Brood Mares and Foals was painted in 1767 at the height of the renowned horse painter's career.

An undisclosed buyer made a successful bid totalling £10,121,250 for the 100cm by 187cm oil on canvas which was offered for sale for the first time.

Sotheby's, which had expected a sale in the range of £10m-£15m, said it was a record price for a work by Stubbs.

The painting was privately kept by the descendants of its original owner Colonel George Lane Parker, son of the second Earl of Macclesfield, for 237 years.

It was exhibited at the National Gallery in London in 2005 having only been shown twice before, both times in 1768.

Emmeline Hallmark, director of British Pictures at Sotheby's, said Stubbs - who published a book titled The Anatomy Of The Horse in 1766 - was "the greatest horse painter of his time".

'Diamond exoplanet' idea boosted by telescope find

By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News

Wasp 12b is superheated by its parent star

A US-British team of astronomers has discovered the first planet with ultra-high concentrations of carbon.

The researchers say their discovery supports the idea there may be carbon-rich, rocky planets whose terrains are made up of diamonds or graphite.

"You might see land masses and mountains made up of diamonds," the lead researcher Dr Nikku Madhusudhan told BBC News.

The study in Nature journal raises new questions about how planets are formed.

The work has been described as an astonishing astronomical tour de force.

They have detected the thermal radiation (heat) from a planet 1,200 light years away using Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope.

From this information they have calculated the composition of its atmosphere, according to Dr Marek Kukula of the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London.

Out of this world

"It is absolutely astonishing that these scientists are able to start to tease out the details of what planets around other stars are made of," he said.

"The planet is thousands of times fainter than the star it orbits. So the scientists have to perform an amazing feat of precision measurement to extract anything at all. The fact that they are able to tell us something about the composition of this particular planet is quite literally out of this world."

Many planets in our galaxy could have ultra-rich concentrations of carbon

To date astronomers have discovered more than 500 planets around other stars. These distant worlds are known as exoplanets.

It is only recently that instruments and analysis methods have become powerful enough to discern their composition.

This new planet, Wasp 12b, is the first to have more carbon than oxygen. It is a so-called gas giant, like Jupiter, and is mostly made from hydrogen gas.

But the planet's core could be composed of some form of diamond, graphite and other carbon compounds, possibly in liquid form.

Tar pools

This discovery suggests there may well be many Earth-sized planets in our galaxy that are ultra-rich in carbon.

But these worlds would be unlike our planet: "Theoretical studies suggest that they could be dominated by diamond and graphite rocks," according to Dr Madhusudhan.

"That would mean that in the mountains, a large fraction of the rock mass could instead be made of diamonds and lots of land masses rich in diamonds, much more than we see on Earth."

These planets would be lacking in water So, if temperatures were sufficiently high, liquid on their surface would consist of carbon-rich compounds, such as tar, he says.

So how common are these diamond planets? The short answer is that astronomers simply don't know. But the fact that they've discovered one means that they'll now start to try and find an answer. Dr Madhusudhan believes that they could be common.

"It's my strong belief that a fair fraction of the exoplanets we have discovered could be carbon-rich and it's a very interesting thought that on such rocky planets, sand could be a rare commodity and diamonds would be plentiful. The more important question is how such planets could form."

An immediate question that is raised is why Wasp 12b is so much higher in carbon than the planets we know about.

Meteor fireball spotted in skies over Britain

Meteor showers, like this one over the UK in 2009, are eagerly sought out by stargazers

Stargazers throughout the UK have reported seeing a meteor-like streak of light in the darkened skies.

The BBC was contacted by people in Scotland, the Midlands, Wales, and northern and south west England who saw the display at about 1740 GMT.

One witness driving home from work in Coventry said the light was a bit scary because it was so "incredibly bright".

Astronomers said the brightness of the meteor, a chunk of space rock burning up in the atmosphere, was unusual.

Dr David Whitehouse, astronomer and former BBC correspondent, said: "It's a bright meteor called a fireball, extraordinarily bright.

"This a chunk of space rock perhaps the size of your fist, perhaps a bit larger, that is burning up as it comes through our atmosphere at an altitude of 60 or 70 miles or so.

"So it sounds extraordinary if you're very lucky enough to have seen it. It's quite rare."

Dr Edward Bloomer, an astronomer with the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said the fireball was probably part of the Geminids meteor shower, which happens every year, appears to radiate from the constellation Gemini and will peak on 14 December.

"We are passing through the trail of the comet, and the material that's in the tail burns up when it comes into contact with the Earth's atmosphere," he said.

"A fireball is rather exotic and because it is bigger, it glows brighter and takes longer to break up."

Tina Baxter was driving home when she spotted the meteor-like streak.

She told the BBC: "I was heading north and it appeared directly in front of me. It was travelling east to west.

"At first I thought it was a firework, but it was travelling at a funny angle - across then down.

"It was a bit scary because it was so massive and incredibly bright. When I got home, my brother was there, and he said he saw it as well.

"I would be surprised if anyone took pictures of it - it appeared for three seconds and then it was gone."

Keith Levitt, 67, from Aberffraw on Anglesey, said he went outside to empty shopping from the boot of his car at about 1740 GMT when he saw a bright light above.

He told the BBC: "Initially, I thought it was the light from a plane, then I suddenly realised it was a ball with bits coming away from it. I realised it was a meteor.

"It was a large object, I only saw it for two or three seconds. It was going in a low trajectory then petered out into nothing.

"I've never seen anything so large and so close. I've seen shooting stars but this was quite spectacular because it was so large."

Nasa sells shuttle PCs without wiping secret data

Nasa is selling of hundreds of PCs used on its Space Shuttle programme

US space agency Nasa has been left red-faced after selling off computers without ensuring that highly sensitive data had been removed.

An internal investigation found 10 cases where PCs were sold despite failing data removal procedures.

Another four PCs - which were about to be sold - were found to contain data restricted under arms control rules.

The computers were being sold off as Nasa winds down its space shuttle operations.

The last shuttle flight is scheduled for June 2011.

But the space agency's internal auditors discovered that its policies for wiping data from PCs used in the Shuttle programme have not always been followed.

They uncovered issues at four locations: the Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers, and the Ames and Langley Research Centers.

In some cases, tests were not being run to confirm the computers had been wiped.

Investigators also found that some PCs that had failed those verification tests were still being put up for sale.

Their report in to the incidents says its impossible to know what data was left on the sold-off equipment, but analysis of similar equipment "raises serious concerns" for Nasa.

Investigators found four PCs being prepared for sale at the Kennedy Space Center which contained data subject to export control by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

They also found dozens of PCs at the Kennedy equipment disposal facility that all had external markings listing network details.

Such details could potentially provide hackers with "unauthorised access to Nasa's internal computer network".

Nasa will now review and update its equipment disposals procedures.

UK team claims fastest land crossing of Antarctica

The team has been conducting a range of scientific experiments en route

A British expedition to Antarctica says it has succeeded in establishing a new record - the fastest land crossing of the southernmost continent.

The Moon Regan Transantarctic Expedition said the 10-man team had completed the crossing in under 13 days, smashing all previous records.

The total distance covered was 1,945.9km (1209 miles) in 303 hours.

The team set off from the Union Glacier airstrip on 25 November and arrived on the Ross Ice Shelf earlier on Thursday.

A statement of the group's website said: "The team has crossed the continent! The Moon Regan Transantarctic Expedition team have just completed the fastest ever vehicle crossing of the Antarctic continent.

"The team will now retrace their tracks to the South Pole, and back to the west coast at Union Glacier. They hope to complete the return trip in around nine days; they will then be the only vehicle-based expedition ever to complete the there-and-back journey."

The team - explorers, mechanics and scientists - travelled in convoy led by a propeller-driven biofuelled scout vehicle. Two large "monster" trucks followed behind carrying most of the crew and equipment.

Ice-penetrating radar was used to avoid crevasses.

The expedition had planned to conduct several scientific tests en route.

These included testing the efficiency of biofuels at extreme temperatures and wireless health monitoring equipment carried by the crew.

'Superscope' yields first glimpse of Double Quasar

The Double Quasar image bodes well for the UK's future in radio astronomy

The E-Merlin telescope has proven its capabilities with a striking image of a quasar nine billion light-years away.

E-Merlin is an array of seven linked UK radio telescopes, updated last year with fibre optic technology that has vastly increased its power.

Light from the Double Quasar has been bent by a massive object between it and the Earth, resulting in a double image.

This gravitational lensing is a powerful demonstration of one aspect of Einstein's theory of relativity.

The quasar - short for quasi-stellar radio source - sprays out tremendous amounts of energy and matter, powered by a super-massive black hole at its heart.

The E-Merlin image shows how gravitational lensing can produce multiple images of the quasar. Visible at the top is a rich picture of the quasar and the jet of radio waves coming out of it at near light-speeds.

Below that is a duplicate image of the quasar; just above it is the fainter image of the nearer galaxy that does the lensing.

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The image demonstrates how the 2009 data-link upgrade for the array of telescopes, run from the Jodrell Bank observatory in Cheshire, has improved its vision.

Previously, the seven telescopes passed data to one another through antennas operating in the microwave region. It was a slow and lossy process that fibre-optic links have now replaced, with promising results.

"E-Merlin is going to be a transformational telescope," said Mike Garrett, director of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. "Astronomers around the world can't wait to get their hands on it.

"As a pathfinder for the next-generation international radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array, E-Merlin represents another giant leap forward for the global radio astronomy community."

Database shows how bees see world in UV

Creeping Zinnia as we see it (left) and with UV shades made visible (right). The petals appear two-toned to bees, the concentric colours drawing them towards the nectar

Researchers are being offered a glimpse of how bees may see flowers in all their ultra-violet (UV) glory.

The Floral Reflectance Database (FReD) was created by researchers at Imperial College London and Queen Mary, University of London.

It enables researchers to "see" plant colours through the eyes of bees and other pollinating insects.

Bees have different colour detection systems from humans, and can see in the UV spectrum.

Details of the free database are published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE.

"This research highlights that the world we see is not the physical or the 'real' world - different animals have very different senses, depending on the environment the animals operate in," said Professor Lars Chittka from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences.

"Much of the coloured world that's accessible to bees and other animals with UV receptors is entirely invisible for us. In order to see that invisible part of the world, we need this special machinery."

How a cactus appears in UV light

The researchers collected what's called "spectroreflective" measurements of the petals and leaves of a large number of different plants. These measurements show the colour of plants across both the visible and invisible spectrum.

Users of the database can then calculate how these plants appear to different pollinating insects, based on studies of what different parts of the spectrum different species see.

Scientists have inferred what colours insects see by inserting microelectrodes into their photoreceptors, and by using less invasive behavioural studies.

Seeing the world as insects may see it can reveal "landing strips" which are invisible to the human eye. These act to guide insects to the nectar they feed on.

These landing strips might take the form of concentric circles of colour or dots.

"Quite often, you will find in radial symmetrical patterns that there is a central area which is differently coloured. In other flowers there are also dots in the centre which indicate where there is basically an orifice for the bee to put in its tongue to extract the goods."

But what is the point of such a tool beyond giving researchers an insect's view?

Professor Chittka says seeing these invisible colours may have commercial applications in the greenhouse and beyond.

"Every third bite that you consume at the dinner table is the result of insect pollinators' work. In order to utilise insects for commercial pollination purposes, we need to understand how insects see flowers.

"We need to understand what kind of a light climate we need to generate in commercial glass houses to facilitate detection of flowers by bees."

Co-author Professor Vincent Savolainen, from Imperial College London, says the database also offers us new perspectives on how plant colour evolved.

"We hope this work can help biologists understand how plants have evolved in different habitats, from biodiversity hotspots in South Africa to the cold habitats of northern Europe," he says.

"FReD's global records may show how flower colour could have changed over time, and how this relates to the different insects that pollinate them, and other factors in their local environment."

Snails with shells that coil anti-clockwise are less likely to fall prey to snakes than their clockwise-coiling cousins, scientists have discovered.

The arrangement of the snakes' teeth makes it difficult for the reptiles to grasp these "left-handed" snails.

The effect of this advantage on the survival of Satsuma snails is so great, say the researchers, that they could separate into a distinct species.

Biologists in Japan report the finding in the journal Nature Communications.

Angle of attack

Satsuma snails come in two forms: those which have shells that coil anti-clockwise, considered sinistral or "left-handed" and those that coil clockwise, considered "right-handed".

Land snails copulate face-to-face, and a snail with a reverse-coiled shell has its whole body reversed - including the position of its genitals.

This means that oppositely coiled individuals are anatomically incompatible when it comes to mating, so the scientists were puzzled as to why "reverse-coiled" snails continued to survive and evolve.

The arrangement of the snake's teeth makes it difficult to grasp the snails.

To investigate, the team, led by Masaki Hoso from Tohoku University in Sendai, set up "predation experiments".

They observed snail-eater snakes' (Pareas iwasaki) as they attempted to eat the snails.

To consume the soft-bodied molluscs, the predators had to extract them from their shells.

"When attacking, the snake always tilts the head leftward," Dr Hoso told BBC News.

Find out more about snails and slugs at BBC Wildlife Finder

The snake grasped the snail with its upper jaw and inserted its lower jaw into the shell to extract the soft body.

The "right-handedness" of this sequence of movements, Dr Hoso explained, means that the snake "cannot grasp [left-handed] or sinistral snails well".

The scientists wrote: "This study illustrates how a single gene for reproductive incompatibility could generate a new species by natural selection."

Anglesey cat's 30 minute car engine trip

Giggs was enticed into the car engine seeking warmth, it is thought

A cat which crawled into a car engine space to keep warm has survived a 30 minute journey after its unwitting owner travelled to work.

The black cat called Giggs was found after his owner's colleagues heard a meowing noise coming from her car.

Giggs's owner Cerian Griffith, from Anglesey, said despite missing a few claws, the cat was unscathed.

And incredibly Giggs did the same thing a second time, but was found before Ms Griffith left home.

"I hadn't thought anything about the fact that I hadn't seen the cat before I left for work," said Ms Griffith, who works at Ysgol David Hughes secondary school in Menai Bridge.

"A colleague said he'd heard a meowing noise coming from my car but I thought he was pulling my leg, until my mum sent me a text to say the cat was missing."

Ms Griffith said she immediately put two and two together.

"I went across the yard shouting 'puss, puss' but there was no response and I thought he must have been a goner," she said.

When she opened the bonnet however "a head popped up" and Giggs was perched to the side of the Vauxhall Corsa's engine.

"He was just sitting there, and I can't understand how he managed to stay there as my journey involves going around a few roundabouts and along the A55," she added.

Ms Griffith said she then had to "embarrassingly" ask the head teacher for permission to take the cat home.

"He was lovely about it, and the cat fell asleep as he was being driven home," she added.

'Fast asleep'

Despite being 13-years-old, and not in the best of health, Giggs survived unscathed, apart from missing "a couple of claws".

The experience has not made him any wiser though as he was again found in the engine a second time.

"My mum said she'd seen him near the car and for me to check," she said.

"I didn't think he'd do it again, but there he was, fast asleep.

"I've no idea how many lives he has, but that one journey must have used up at least three," she added.

An RSPCA spokeswoman said it was not uncommon during cold weather for small animals to crawl beneath cars and climb up inside the engine compartment, seeking warmth and shelter.

"If you do discover an animal hitchhiker - and you do not know its identity - we would advise people to contact the RSPCA 0300 123 4999, and we can try to help trace the owner," added the spokeswoman.

A species of fork-marked lemur believed to be new to science has been found in the forests of Madagascar.

The find is revealed on the BBC documentary Decade of Discovery.

Primate expert and president of Conservation International, Russ Mittermeier, first spotted the lemur during an expedition in 1995, but has confirmed its existence whilst filming the documentary this year, when he and his colleagues captured and took blood samples from the small primate before returning it to its forest home.

I immediately knew that it was likely a new species to science Russ Mittermeier Conservation International

Genetic testing of these samples should confirm whether the animal is indeed a new species.

Dr Mittermeier, however, is already convinced that it is.

Forked-marked lemurs belong to the genus, or group of species, called Phaner. If confirmed as a new species, this would be only the fifth member of that group.

Following the call

Dr Mittermeier first saw the squirrel-sized creature in Daraina, a protected area in the northeast of Madagascar.

He was there in search of another lemur - the golden-crowned Tattersall's sifaka (Propithecus tattersali), a much larger species only discovered in 1988.

"I was surprised to see a fork-marked lemur there, since this animal had not yet been recorded from the region," he recalled.

FORK-MARKED FACTS Phaner lemurs have a black, Y-shaped line that starts above each eye and joins together as a single line on the top of the head, creating the fork that gives these animals their common name Their large hands and feet help them grip onto trees The lemurs vocalise with the loud, high-pitched night-time call They tend to run rapidly along horizontal tree branches and to jump from one branch to the next without pausing Their diet consists of a high proportion of gums exuded by trees and nectar from flowers A long tongue enables them to slurp up nectar and a specialised toothcomb acts as a scraping tool to bite into tree bark

"I immediately knew that it was likely a new species to science, but didn't have the time to follow up until now."

So in October of this year, the researcher led an expedition - including geneticist Ed Louis from the Omaha Zoo and a film crew from the BBC's Natural History Unit - to the same area, where they managed to track down the animal.

The team set out just after sunset, which is when fork-marked lemurs are most vocal.

They heard one calling close to camp at the top of a tree and ran through the forest following its calls.

The researchers eventually caught sight of the animal in the torchlight, and fired a tranquiliser dart.

A team member then climbed the tree to bring the sleepy little lemur safely down to the ground, where they could examine it.

The shape of the lemur's markings, the size of its limbs and its long, nectar-slurping tongue are familiar facets of all Phaner lemurs.

But this one has a slightly different colour pattern. It also displayed an unusual head-bobbing behaviour that the scientists had not seen in other fork-marked lemurs.

A strange structure under the lemur's tongue could also distinguish it from its closest relatives.

"The genetics will tell the real story," said Dr Mittermeier.

If confirmed as a new species, Dr Louis and Dr Mittermeier would like the animal to be named after Fanamby, the conservation organisation that has been instrumental in protecting the forest of Daraina.

"This is yet another remarkable discovery from the island of Madagascar, the world's highest priority biodiversity hotspot and one of the most extraordinary places in our planet," Dr Mittermeier said.

"It is particularly remarkable that we continue to find new species of lemurs and many other plants and animals in this heavily impacted country, which has already lost 90% or more of its original vegetation."

And because of its very restricted range, it is likely that this will turn out to be an endangered or critically endangered species.

Decade of Discovery, a collaboration between Conservation International and the BBC's Natural History Unit, will be broadcast at 20.00BST on Tuesday 14 December on BBC Two.

Voyager near Solar System's edge

Voyager is approaching the edge of the bubble of charged particles the Sun has thrown out into space

Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, has reached a new milestone in its quest to leave the Solar System.

Now 17.4bn km (10.8bn miles) from home, the veteran probe has detected a distinct change in the flow of particles that surround it.

These particles, which emanate from the Sun, are no longer travelling outwards but are moving sideways.

It means Voyager must be very close to making the jump to interstellar space - the space between the stars.

Edward Stone, the Voyager project scientist, lauded the explorer and the fascinating science it continues to return 33 years after launch.

"When Voyager was launched, the space age itself was only 20 years old, so there was no basis to know that spacecraft could last so long," he told BBC News.

"We had no idea how far we would have to travel to get outside the Solar System. We now know that in roughly five years, we should be outside for the first time."

Dr Stone was speaking here at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, the largest gathering of Earth scientists in the world.

Voyager 1 was launched on 5 September 1977, and its sister spacecraft, Voyager 2, on 20 August 1977.

The Nasa probes' initial goal was to survey the outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, a task completed in 1989.

They were then despatched towards deep space, in the general direction of the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy.

Sustained by their radioactive power packs, the probes' instruments continue to function well and return data to Earth, although the vast distance between them and Earth means a radio message now has a travel time of about 16 hours.

The newly reported observation comes from Voyager 1's Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument, which has been monitoring the velocity of the solar wind.

This stream of charged particles forms a bubble around our Solar System known as the heliosphere. The wind travels at "supersonic" speed until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock.

At this point, the wind then slows dramatically and heats up in a region termed the heliosheath. Voyager has determined the velocity of the wind at its location has now slowed to zero.

"We have gotten to the point where the wind from the Sun, which until now has always had an outward motion, is no longer moving outward; it is only moving sideways so that it can end up going down the tail of the heliosphere, which is a comet-shaped-like object," said Dr Stone, who is based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

This phenomenon is a consequence of the wind pushing up against the matter coming from other stars. The boundary between the two is the "official" edge of the Solar System - the heliopause. Once Voyager crosses over, it will be in interstellar space.

First hints that Voyager had encountered something new came in June. Several months of further data were required to confirm the observation.

"When I realized that we were getting solid zeroes, I was amazed," said Rob Decker, a Voyager Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument co-investigator from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

"Here was Voyager, a spacecraft that has been a workhorse for 33 years, showing us something completely new again."

Voyager is racing on towards the heliopause at 17km/s. Dr Stone expects the cross-over to occur within the next few years.

'Ice volcano' identified on Saturn's moon Titan

In this false colour image, greens denote volcanic material and blues are believed to be sands

Scientists think they now have the best evidence yet for an ice volcano on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.

The Cassini probe has spotted a 1,500m-high mountain with a deep pit in it, and what looks like a flow of material on the surrounding surface.

The new feature, which has been dubbed "The Rose", was seen with the probe's radar and infrared instruments.

Titan has long been speculated to have cryovolcanoes but its hazy atmosphere makes all observations very difficult.

Researchers are now wondering how active this mountain might be, and what sort of lava it could spew.

"Much of Titan's outer material is water-ice and ammonia, and so that's certainly one possible material that could melt at low temperatures and flow on the surface," explained Dr Randy Kirk, a Cassini radar team-member from the US Geological Survey (USGS).

"But there's a lot of organic material in the atmosphere, and deposited from the atmosphere, and maybe coming up from the interior in the form of these volcanoes. [This material could be] waxy or even plasticy," he told BBC News.

Dr Kirk was speaking here at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, the largest gathering of Earth scientists in the world.

There have been previous claims for ice volcanoes at Titan, but these have never won universal support. Scientists have continued to look however because it is considered an excellent candidate given its frigid conditions: the surface temperature is about minus 180 Celsius.

Dr Kirk and colleagues hope their new data will convince even their sternest critics that a positive identification has now finally been made.

The putative volcano is sited just south of Titan's equator in a sea of sand dunes referred to as Sotra Facula.

Titan's thick haze makes all observations at the moon extremely difficult

The radar instrument on Cassini is able to see through the moon's haze and establish the local topography - scientists can build a 3D model of the ground. The infrared instrument on the probe, on the other hand, can gather some information on the variation in composition of the surface materials. Taken together, Dr Kirk's team says, the two views put forward a compelling case.

"We've seen a mountain that has a crater in, that flows of material coming out and spreading across the surface at some time in the past; and in fact when we looked in more detail in 3D we found that there was more than one volcano in this area. And that's actually very common in volcanic areas of the Earth and other planets."

Jeffrey Kargel, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, Tucson, is not connected with the Cassini mission. He told the meeting The Rose was the most likely volcano he had yet seen on Titan.

He said that if the lavas were rich in hydrocarbons, they could have the look of softened asphalt, candle wax or even polyethylene.

"There are many unanswered questions and intriguing possibilities," he told reporters.

"Is Sotra the source of Titan's atmospheric methane? Is cryovolcanism still active at Sotra or elsewhere on Titan? What is the cryovolcanic substance? Is cryovolcanism there explosive or quietly effusive? Might cryo-lavas have dredged up indications of fossils or chemical remains of sub-surface life?"

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a co-operative project of Nasa, the European Space Agency (Esa) and the Italian space agency (Asi).

Life may have survived 'Snowball Earth' in ocean pockets

An impression of a frozen Earth shrouded in snow and ice. Basic organisms may have survived in pockets of open water, according to new research

Life may have survived a cataclysmic global freeze some 700 million years ago in pockets of open ocean.

Researchers claim to have found evidence in Australia that turbulent seas still raged during the period, where microorganisms may have clung on for life.

Conditions on what is dubbed "Snowball Earth" were so harsh that most life is thought to have perished.

Details are published in the journal Geology.

The researchers in Britain and Australia claim to have found deposits in the remote Flinders Ranges in South Australia which bear the unmistakable mark of turbulent oceans.

They say the sediments date to the Sturtian glaciation some 700 million years ago, one of two great ice ages of the Cryogenian period associated with the "Snowball Earth" hypothesis.

The evidence comes from the Flinders Ranges in South Australia

These sediments, they say, prove pockets of open ocean waters must have existed during the period, perhaps supporting microscopic life.

The snowball earth hypothesis suggests the land and oceans of our planet were thrown into a deep freeze, the like of which has never been seen before or since.

"For the first time, we have very clear evidence that storms were affecting the sea floor," said Dr Dan Le Heron of Royal Holloway, University of London, who lead the research. "That means we have to have pockets or oases within this 'Snowball Earth' that are free of ice."

"We see a very particular type of feature in sedimentary rocks called 'hummocky cross-bedding'. These features can only form where storm waves sweep up sand from the ocean floor, slosh it back and forth and create a bed of sandstone."

These ocean pockets could explain how some microorganisms survived the period and went on to flourish and diversify during the later Cambrian period.

"This could be one of the ideal places for early organisms to start thriving and for evolution to really start kicking in."

The "Snowball Earth" hypothesis is just that - a hypothesis - and while most agree on the evidence for a deep freeze, argument remains over the causes and the extent to which the entire globe froze during the Sturtian and Marinoan glaciations.

Some wonder how any life could have survived such a deep freeze.

Professor Doug Benn of the University Centre in Svalbard, who admits to being more a "Slushball Earth" or "Softball Earth" theorist said: "The paper supports the idea that the Earth was not completely frozen throughout one of the extreme glaciations in the late Precambrian."

"The Snowball model was ground-breaking in its time, but now it has to be replaced by a more dynamic - and even more interesting - picture of how the Earth functioned in the distant past," he said.