From the BBC:

Click here if you want to see this article with a couple of scary looking photos

How bloodsuckers find their blood

By Jennifer Carpenter Science reporter, BBC News

Scientists have identified the heat-sensitive facial nerves used by vampire bats to detect their next meal.

The nerves allow bats to pinpoint where the blood flows closest to their prey's skin so they can feed more efficiently.

Vampire bats are among a handful of animals that use infrared sensors to locate their next meal, but are unique in the way they do it.

The findings are reported in the journal Nature.

Native to Central and South America, the Common Vampire Bat, Desmodus rotundus, needs to take a sanguineous slurp every night to survive.

Researchers believe that the bats rely solely on detecting their next meal in the dark by listening out for their prey's breathing.

Having located a prey individual the bats crawls along the ground and onto the animal.

Once atop their prey, the bats are capable of using their heat-adapted nerves in their upper lip and nose to detect blood up to 20cm under their prey's flesh.

The new finding has pinpointed the molecule that is responsible - heat-sensitive TRPV1. TRPV1, a protein, usually helps animals detect dangerously high temperatures (those over 43 degrees C), but in the bats, some of the TRPV1 molecules have been mutated into a version that is sensitive to lower temperatures, those around 30 degrees C.

Lots of blood-sucking animals search out their next meal using heat-detecting molecules, but they all seem to do it in a different way, said bat biologist, Brock Fenton from the University of Western Ontario, who was not involved in the work.

He said that perceptual world of bats undoubtedly has many more intriguing secrets.

From the BBC:

Antimatter belt around Earth discovered by Pamela craft

A thin band of antimatter particles called antiprotons enveloping the Earth has been spotted for the first time.

The find, described in Astrophysical Journal Letters, confirms theoretical work that predicted the Earth's magnetic field could trap antimatter.

The team says a small number of antiprotons lie between the Van Allen belts of trapped "normal" matter.

The researchers say there may be enough to implement a scheme using antimatter to fuel future spacecraft.

The antiprotons were spotted by the Pamela satellite (an acronym for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) - launched in 2006 to study the nature of high-energy particles from the Sun and from beyond our Solar System - so-called cosmic rays.

These cosmic ray particles can slam into molecules that make up the Earth's atmosphere, creating showers of particles.

Many of the cosmic ray particles or these "daughter" particles they create are caught in the Van Allen belts, doughnut-shaped regions where the Earth's magnetic field traps them.

Among Pamela's goals was to specifically look for small numbers of antimatter particles among the far more abundant normal matter particles such as protons and the nuclei of helium atoms.

'Abundant source'

The new analysis, described in an online preprint, shows that when Pamela passes through a region called the South Atlantic Anomaly, it sees thousands of times more antiprotons than are expected to come from normal particle decays, or from elsewhere in the cosmos.

The team says that this is evidence that bands of antiprotons, analogous to the Van Allen belts, hold the antiprotons in place - at least until they encounter the normal matter of the atmosphere, when they "annihiliate" in a flash of light.

The band is "the most abundant source of antiprotons near the Earth", said Alessandro Bruno of the University of Bari, a co-author of the work.

"Trapped antiprotons can be lost in the interactions with atmospheric constituents, especially at low altitudes where the annihilation becomes the main loss mechanism," he told BBC News.

"Above altitudes of several hundred kilometres, the loss rate is significantly lower, allowing a large supply of antiprotons to be produced."

Dr Bruno said that, aside from confirming theoretical work that had long predicted the existence of these antimatter bands, the particles could also prove to be a novel fuel source for future spacecraft - an idea explored in a report for Nasa's Institute for Advanced Concepts.

From the BBC:

Space junk could be tackled by housekeeping spacecraft

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Scientists have proposed a viable solution to the growing problem of space junk.

The idea involves launching a satellite to rendezvous with the largest space debris, such as spent rocket bodies.

The satellite would then affix a propellant kit, driving the debris to its doom in the Earth's atmosphere.

The authors claim the scheme, in the journal Acta Astronautica, could inexpensively remove five to 10 such objects per year of operation.

The scope of the problem is enormous; more than 17,000 objects of a size greater than 10cm reside in low-Earth orbit. But the greater problem on the horizon is that each of the largest of these represents the potential to create thousands more.

"In our opinion the problem is very challenging and it's quite urgent as well," said Marco Castronuovo, the Italian Space Agency researcher who authored the paper.

"The time to act is now; as we go farther in time we will need to remove more and more fragments," he told BBC News.

In 2007, China demonstrated an anti-satellite system, destroying one of its own defunct satellites and creating 2,000 extra bits of debris in the process. More recently, a collision between US and Russian satellites created even more.

What is feared is a kind of chain reaction, called the Kessler syndrome after the Nasa scientist who first described it in 1978, in which fragments hit other fragments which in turn hit more, creating a cloud of debris that will make vast swathes of low-Earth orbit completely unusable.

The debris presents a risk not only to other man-made satellites in orbit, but occasionally also to the International Space Station and manned space missions.

Space politics

The new research identifies more than 60 objects at a height of about 850km, and two thirds of those weigh more than three tonnes each - many moving near a speed of 7.5km/s. Most of these largest threats are spent rocket bodies, and it is there that Dr Castronuovo thinks the effort should begin.

"It's difficult from a political point of view; many of these objects belong to nations that are not willing to co-operate or do not allow access to their objects even if they are at the end of their operative life, and there is no international regulation on who should remove the objects that are left in space," he said.

"If we start concentrating on the spent rocket bodies - which do not have sensitive equipment on board -it should not pose any problem to the owner to give permission to remove them; and there's no doubt they are not operative anymore."

Dr Castronuovo proposes a scheme in which small satellites are deployed on seven-year missions, each with two robotic arms: one to intercept a rocket body or failed satellite and hang on, and another to affix an ion-engine thruster that will drive the debris out of orbit.

The satellites would then release the debris, hopping from one to the next in a choreographed dance with five to ten large objects per year.

"The proximity operations and manoeuvring talked about here is not easy, but the technology is getting there for that; the idea that you go and attach yourself to something in orbit is becoming more credible," said Stuart Eves, principal engineer for Surrey Satellite Technology.

"People have come up with all sorts of daft ideas... that are really science fiction at the moment. Something like this is a lot more practical."

Nevertheless, the greater problem may be political, as any proposal struggles to be seen as a purely aimed at space junk, Dr Castronuovo said.

"This kind of approach could be seen as a threat to operative systems; if you have the power to go to an object in space and pull it down, nothing prevents you from going to an operative satellite and pulling it down, so it's really a delicate matter."

From the BBC:

Rioters' mobile phones could help police investigation

Police may be able to use rioters' mobile phone information to help convict them, say legal experts.

Investigators can apply to see the contents of text and instant messages, as well as their location.

However, authorities may not be able to access the full wealth of data available to telecoms companies because of legal restrictions.

Guidelines require police to find out individuals' identities first before obtaining records from trouble spots.

Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, has already said that it will be cooperating with investigations, and pointed out that it is bound to hand over subscriber information when it relates to criminal activity.

The company's BBM instant messenger has been identified as one of the services used by rioters to coordinate their actions.

One-by-one

Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), police can apply for details of a customer's phone records, including their location, details of calls made and received, and internet activity.

But requests must be made for each suspect on a case-by-case basis.

Police would be unable to carry out a broad-based search, identifying, for example, every person who was in Clapham Junction sending the word "riot".

"They would have to say we want this individual's comms data and these are the reasons why," said solicitor advocate Simon McKay, who has written a book on the subject.

"When it comes to the next person they would have to look at that completely separately and re-apply."

Initial identification data would likely need to be taken from video, photographs, CCTV footage and other intelligence.

Those limits mean telecoms subscriber data becomes useful additional evidence, rather than a first port of call.

Mr McKay explained that, when considering requests, the issue of collateral intrusion also had to be taken into account - specifically, how much of other people's data might inadvertently be disclosed, along with that of the suspect.

Time consuming

Such safeguards make investigations extremely labour intensive according to Barrie Davies, a retired chief inspector who now teaches RIPA procedure for Baron Training.

"It is a lot of paperwork," he told BBC News.

"People don't always believe us but there is a lot of oversight that is done by authorising officers to make sure that anything that is done is necessary and proportionate."

Despite the restrictions, some legal experts believe there is scope to push RIPA guidelines further than they have been in the past.

One senior barrister, with extensive experience of this area, told the BBC that doing a "trawl" for mobile phones in a particular location where rioting was taking place might be considered proportionate in this case.

However, he conceded that it was unlikely police would make such a request.

Message data

Another possibility, according to solicitor Mike Conradi from DLA Piper, would be for BlackBerry to pro-actively offer a limited portion of their user data to police.

"They could say 'this person in in Brixton and he sent messages to 40 people and an hour later 25 of them turned up'," said Mr Conradi.

That basic information could be used to narrow down suspects worthy of further investigation, without violating either data protection or RIPA guidelines, he explained.

"There's a specific section in the data protection act which says you can disclose personal information for the purposes of detection of crime without the consent of the person to whom it relates."

The Met Police was unavailable for comment on this matter at the time of writing.

From the BBC:

New theories over methane puzzle

By Matt McGrath Science reporter, BBC World Service

Scientists say that there has been a mysterious decline in the growth of methane in the atmosphere in the last decades of the 20th century.

Researchers writing in the journal Nature have come up with two widely differing theories as to the cause.

One suggests the decline was caused by greater commercial use of natural gas, the other that increased use in Asia of artificial fertiliser was responsible.

Both studies agree that human activities are the key element.

And there are suggestions that methane levels are now on the rise again.

Methane is regarded as one of the most potent greenhouse gases, trapping over 20 times more atmospheric heat than carbon dioxide.

Since the start of the industrial revolution, levels of methane in the atmosphere have more than doubled from a wide variety of sources, including energy production, the burning of forests, and increased numbers of cattle and sheep.

But between 1980 and the turn of the millennium, the growth rate reduced substantially, leaving scientists puzzled as to the cause.

Now, two teams of researchers have arrived at two very different conclusions for the decline. The first study was led by Dr Murat Aydin from the University of California, Irvine.

"We went after ethane - it's another hydrocarbon similar to methane, it has common sources, but is easier to trace. We determined what ethane did during the second half of the 20th century using ancient air that we collected at polar ice sheets.

"We think the trend we see in methane is best explained by dramatic changes in emissions linked to fossil fuel production and use which seem to have declined in the 1980s and 1990s.

Efficiency drive

Dr Murat is at pains to emphasise that economic efficiency played a critical part.

"Methane became economically valuable only during the second half of the 20th Century. We think this had a role in it. We're not suggesting we used less fossil fuel, but because we were more careful about capturing the natural gas and using it as an energy resource, emissions of these gases into the atmosphere declined at the end of the 20th Century."

However another team of researchers from the same department in the same university came to different conclusions using a different method of measuring methane.

The second team looked at different chemical signals of methane from both fossil fuels and from microbes active in wetlands and rice paddies.

Traditionally rice farmers have used organic manure which contains high levels of methane. By using artificial fertilisers, the farmers have considerably reduced this amount.

"Approximately half of the decrease in methane can be explained by reduced emissions from rice agriculture in Asia associated with increases in fertiliser application and reductions in water use," says the lead author Dr Fuu Ming Kai.

Fertilisers are believed to enhance the ability of some bacteria to consume methane that originates in the soils.

One or the other?

However, the second team found no evidence that the decline was caused by more efficient use of fossil fuels.

This has puzzled Dr Paul Fraser, an expert in methane emissions with the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research. He says both papers are plausible. But he is concerned that the second team may have been too quick to dismiss the idea that increased use of natural gas may have played a part.

"The authors may be correct but from the data shown it is not unequivocal that there could not also be a fossil methane contribution to the declining methane sources," he said.

However he says he would not be surprised if in the long term both explanations are significant in explaining the decline.

Climate sceptics who think that natural factors and not human activities play a more important role in temperature rise might take comfort from the lack of certainty in these papers - but according to Dr Murat Aydin this would be a mistake.

"I think both studies are actually suggesting that human activities are playing a very important role in determining the methane levels in the atmosphere," he explained.

As we use more and more fossil fuels, you can be sure it will start creeping up again slowly, I think it demonstrates pretty clearly that human activities have direct and pretty profound impacts on the levels of these gases in the atmosphere."

From the BBC:

LHC@home allows public to help hunt for Higgs particle

The Large Hadron Collider team will be tapping into the collective computing power of the public to help it simulate particle physics experiments.

Among other pursuits, the effort could help uncover the Higgs boson.

The effort, dubbed LHC@home 2.0, is a vastly updated version of a 2004 effort to enlist the public's computers to simulate beams of protons.

Advances in home computers now allow simulations of the enormously more complex particle collisions themselves.

The LHC facility is the world's most powerful "atom smasher", occupying an underground, 27km ring beneath the Swiss-French border.

"Volunteers can now actively help physicists in the search for new fundamental particles that will provide insights into the origin of our Universe, by contributing spare computing power from their personal computers and laptops," read a statement from Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research which runs the LHC.

'Fundamental principles'

Along with the grandeur of the accelerator itself came an unprecedented computing infrastructure to handle the 15 million gigabytes of data produced at the LHC each year.

The Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid is a 100m-euro network designed to handle the flood of data and distribute it to scientists worldwide.

The LHC@home project will complement this network by splitting up the gargantuan task of simulating the collisions, feeding those computer simulations back to the scientists for comparison.

"By looking for discrepancies between the simulations and the data, we are searching for any sign of disagreement between the current theories and the physical Universe," says the LHC@home 2.0 website.

"Ultimately, such a disagreement could lead us to the discovery of new phenomena, which may be associated with new fundamental principles of nature."

The project is just the latest in an increasingly long line of "citizen science" projects in which the power of the public's home computers is put to use in solving scientific problems; the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence and the fabulously complex process of protein folding are both subjects of such distributed computing projects.

From the BBC:

Another giant UK ash cloud 'unlikely' in our lifetimes

By Hamish Pritchard Science Reporter

The UK is unlikely to see another giant volcanic ash cloud in this lifetime, according to a new study.

The 2010 cloud cost European businesses more than £2bn and a smaller eruption this spring caused more anxiety.

But analysis of a record of such clouds stretching back into prehistory across northern Europe showed big ash clouds of the type seen in 2010 occurred on average only every 56 years.

The report has been published in the journal Geology.

While some ash clouds were witnessed and recorded by writers and artists through history, no such evidence exists from before AD1600.

Fortunately, a detailed 7,000 year record is preserved in peat bogs and lake beds in the form of microscopic layers of volcanic material, including ash, called tephra.

Now a team of scientists has compiled both the written history and sediment records from the UK, Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia and the Faroe Islands to show just how common these events are.

Over the last 1,000 years - when the best records are available - ash has fallen in northern Europe on average every 56 years. A computer model analysing the prevalence of ash deposits estimates a 16% chance of ash fall every decade.

Over the whole 7,000-year-period, they found 38 tephra layers in Scandinavia, 33 in Ireland, 14 in the UK and 11 in Germany.

'Pretty resilient'

This pattern of decreasing occurrence with more southerly latitudes can be explained when the source of the ash is considered.

"The vast majority are Icelandic," said co-author Gill Plunkett of Queen's University in Belfast.

Chemical analysis showed that about a third comes from just one large Icelandic volcano, Hekla.

The prevailing westerly winds over the Atlantic are most likely to deliver ash to Scandinavia. However, when high pressure builds over Europe northerly winds are common over the Atlantic, bringing ash to Ireland and the UK.

Not all eruptions make far-travelling ash clouds; Icelandic eruptions have been far more common than ash deposits, averaging 20-25 per century for the last 1,000 years.

The authors caution that not all tephra are well preserved in peat - some may have dissolved in the acid conditions and disappeared from the record.

While Europe suffered economically from last year's eruption, past generations seem to have shrugged off the ash.

Looking back at the volcanic events recorded in Irish peat, Dr Plunkett sees little evidence of alarm.

"I'm sceptical that there was very much human impact - I looked to see if periods of volcanic activity correspond with cultural change in Ireland," Dr Plunkett told BBC News.

"We can look at particular eruptions and try to find out if there were changes in climate or changes in agricultural practices at the time, but I haven't found any correlation. I think we're pretty resilient," she said.

From the BBC:

When to pull the plug on old software

By Iain Mackenzie Technology reporter, BBC News

The evolution of digital technology can be ruthless in its speed.

Not only does it give birth at a frightening rate; it has a nasty habit of killing its elderly relatives.

Take the latest release of Apple's OS X operating system - Lion. This £21 Mac makeover adds more than 250 new features including an iPad-style app interface, wireless file sharing and a hugely expanded lexicon of finger-gnarling multi-touch gestures.

But it removes Rosetta, the handy little code translation engine that enabled newer Intel-powered computers to run programs written for Apple's older machines, which were built around Motorola/IBM PowerPC chips.

The result: Many owners who didn't scour the small print have found themselves unable to use some of their software.

John Silk, a London-based PR consultant and blogger, considers himself to be fairly tech-savvy. Yet he fell victim to Lion.

"When I tried to launch Word, Excel or Photoshop, I just got a dialog box saying the programs weren't supported," said Mr Silk.

His versions of Microsoft Office and Adobe's image editing program were a few years old, but still more than adequate for producing basic documents and simple photo tinkering.

"Lion might be £21, but it's going to cost me almost £300 more to get back to where I was," he said.

Apple switched to Intel processors in 2006, meaning newer software had to be written for a completely different machine architecture.

This massive technical change in direction could have been jarring but Rosetta cushioned the blow - granting users a few more precious years in which to say their goodbyes.

Yet the end, when it came, still felt sudden and for some users, expensive.

Deciding when to euthanise your own or other people's products in the name of progress is a challenge faced by all computer companies.

It is a difficult balance - make the cut too early and you risk irritating customers who feel cheated that their investment is now digital junk, hang on too long and your shiny new system is hobbled by the need to accommodate ancient relics.

One manufacturer that knows the perils of legacy support more than most is Microsoft. Its 10-year-old Windows XP remains the world's most popular operating system even though official support has now been discontinued.

Lessons from history

The company has gone to great lengths to ensure that applications designed for XP will still work in Windows 7, including the option to run a virtual XP environment within the new OS.

However, such lessons have been hard learned. Microsoft's widely pilloried Vista operating system rendered many pieces of hardware effectively useless because manufacturers were not adequately primed to create new drivers, or were unwilling to participate in the costly driver certification programme.

"It is fair to say that we learnt a great deal from the Windows Vista change," said Ian Moulster, a product manager at Microsoft UK.

"It was a big jump to Vista from XP. We wanted to make sure [users] didn't have the same pain."

Microsoft has no hard-and-fast rule for how long it will endeavour to ensure compatibility between its current systems and legacy software.

But, Mr Moulster explained, products that work closely with the core functions of the operating system, such as anti virus and disc management applications, are more susceptible to being left behind earlier.

Getting caught on the wrong side of enforced obsolescence can be annoying and costly for the home user. For businesses, the stakes are potentially much higher.

Finding that a key piece of software, such as a payroll or accounting package suddenly no longer works after an upgrade could bring operations to a grinding halt.

Even if an IT setup appears to be doing its job perfectly well in its current incarnation, external pressures such as changing security threats or expiring support systems make modernisation essential.

No explicit warnings

"The biggest problem today is technologies like Cobol which have not been supported for a long time. People that knew these technologies don't know them any more or they are dying or retiring," said Maurice Aroesti, chief executive of OCS Consulting.

"Also in the business scenario, regulation means that you can't live with unsupported software, even though it might work. You've got all the regulatory control, risk management, etc."

Software vendors say that most customers understand the need to make changes and are usually happy about it, as long as they are kept well informed and given plenty of advance warning.

Surprises would be bad for business, according to Ian Tufts, head of R&D in the small business division at Sage, which provides a range of business management applications to six million customers globally.

"We have a policy and formal procedure for dealing with the communication of [obsolescence] with our customers and it generally tends to be around about two years before we would withdraw support," he said.

Sage also supports its packages for at least five generations prior to the current version, ensuring that users know what is coming well in advance.

Where Apple incurred the wrath of some users was, perhaps, not the withdrawal of Rosetta, but the fact that it happened in such a low-key way.

For those downloading the Lion update, there were no explicit warnings.

Innovations could help

"There's no physical reason why it couldn't have included Rosetta in Lion, except Apple decided it's time to draw a line and people need to move on," said James Holland, a technology writer for the website ElectricPig.co.uk.

While he appreciates the company's drive to innovate, Mr Holland believes that it could have done a better job flagging up the Rosetta issue.

"Windows PCs can literally be cobbled together by a man in a shed so Microsoft has a job on their hands catering for all the variants," he said.

"Apple is lucky in that it makes the hardware and the software. It should therefore be able to see where the likely holes are."

Ironically, it is possible that new innovations could help mitigate the problem of upgrade obsolescence in future.

Cloud-based software should, theoretically, be less susceptible to changes to operating systems or other installed software components.

Because applications such as Google Docs are platform neutral, their functionality is not affected by the base OS or other local factors, barring the odd web browser compatibility issue.

And the sophistication of cloud computing is quickly progressing beyond word processors and spreadsheets.

Adobe now offers a web-based version of its Photoshop Express image editor, containing many of the most commonly used application features.

Faster internet connections and more powerful processors - both in data centres and home computers - will open the possibility of high-end applications, such as video editing, being run in the same way.

For business too, the intermeshing of hardware, OS and software should become less of an issue.

"When you take that kind of approach it really decouples the application from the operating system and mitigates a lot of those problems that customers often have when those sort of things are intertwined," said Patrick Irwin, a product manager at Citrix.

However, cloud computing may not end all upgrade compatibility headaches.

The ability to seamlessly push out new versions of an application, without the user even needing to update is fine for free software such as Google's app suite, or for open source platforms.

But business is business, and planned obsolescence serves another purpose. It drives customer spending.

Even if the technical hurdles are overcome, software makers will want to retain the ultimate sanction for reluctant upgraders who refuse to reach into their wallets.

Apple was contacted and given the opportunity to take part in this article, but did not respond.

From the BBC:

Video games industry: Rise of the 'bedroom' developer

By Christopher Sleight Tayside reporter, BBC News website

A father and son stand in front of a pair of large computer screens, posing comically as they calibrate a wireless controller underneath the monitors.

The pair, bathed in coloured light from ceiling spotlights, then begin running maniacally on the spot before flying with their arms as their on-screen characters take off.

They're in a packed Caird Hall in Dundee, on the opening day of Scotland's biggest video games festival - Dare ProtoPlay. The hall is crammed and buzzing with excited activity as people try out the games on display.

The queue to get in snakes out of the main doors and around the square outside. By that measurement, there appears to be a healthy demand for computer games.

Job losses

Yet the scene contrasts sharply with the doom that seemed to be infecting the city's video games industry almost exactly a year ago.

On 17 August 2010, one of the UK's biggest games companies - Dundee-based Realtime Worlds - went into administration with the loss of more than 150 jobs.

The company's collapse followed disappointment in the sector as the coalition government at Westminster cancelled planned tax breaks for the industry.

Many experts predicted these hi-tech firms - full of young, mobile people - would simply move abroad in search of more sympathetic tax regimes.

This once flourishing part of the Scottish - and the UK - economy was in terminal decline, they said.

But the city's Abertay University, one of the few places in the UK you can take courses on video games design and development, is still churning out graduates keen to make their mark in the sector.

One of them is Martyn Hunter, a 21-year-old from Kirkcaldy in Fife, who believes the collapse of Realtime was more a sign of rapid change in the industry, rather than a symbol of its decline.

On starting his course three years ago, his ambition was to work on a big blockbuster title like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto - but now he's more interested in becoming an indie games producer and join the the "bedroom developer" revolution.

"Triple-A titles, major mainstream budgets just aren't going to work these days," he says.

"I personally think that smaller, casual games for mobile platforms, Facebook and social networks are the way forward, because they require a lower budget and give a lot more creative freedom - which gives birth to such amazing new games."

Far from being "depressing", Mr Hunter says it's actually a time of incredible opportunity for graduates entering the sector.

"It's very inspiring and very exciting to be able to have the technology in your bedroom where you can sit down with a couple of friends and build something new," he says.

"You can post it online. You don't need a publisher and you don't need any funding."

Risky business

In contrast, blockbuster titles need two or three years to develop and cost millions of pounds to bring to market.

And the companies that make them can live or die by the game's success - it was the lukewarm reception to Realtime's last game, All Points Bulletin, that finally tipped it into administration.

Big games are big risk, especially during an economic downturn, when consumers are more reluctant to splash out £80 on a game when they can often play titles on Facebook or their smartphone for free.

But how do you make a living developing free or very cheap games?

Colin Macdonald, former studio manager at Realtime Worlds' says the key is that developers making "casual" games now have a global audience at their fingertips.

For an indie developer overheads can be close to zero, development costs are cheap and there is no reliance on retailers having shelf space for your product.

Instead, games are sold in app stores or on websites.

Mr Macdonald says there is still a "buoyant" market for big budget titles, but more and more developers are going their own way.

"You've got a potential audience of hundreds of thousands, of millions, of tens of millions," he says.

"Even if you just charge pennies or a couple of pounds here and there - multiply that by tens of millions and it's huge money. Absolutely huge."

He cites the example of 32-year-old Swedish developer Markus Persson who released a game called Minecraft in 2009. Two years later, he has sold more than 3,000,000 copies and was estimated in April 2011 to have made 23m Euro (£20m) in revenue.

Even games that are given away for free can make money, with players offered opportunities to spend on extra functionality or access to more levels.

"We've seen countless examples over the last couple of years where one person or two people have literally made a game in their bedroom and are millionaires off the back it it," adds Mr Macdonald, who now works for games studio eeGeo.

"They're selling it to millions of people and they're getting all that money themselves."

'Facebook mums'

But it's not just the lack of friction involved in building and selling a "casual" game, it's the potential new audiences available.

As smartphone ownership continues to rise and use of social networking websites increases, developers are finding that it's easier to reach groups that traditionally haven't played video games.

This potential is summed up neatly by another Abertay graduate while brainstorming ideas at the festival "games jam" - a challenge to build a game from scratch in just three days.

"My mum plays games on Facebook," he confides to the group. "That's all you need to know."

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with video clip

Kew launches native flowers project at Wakehurst Place

Experts at Kew's Millennium Seed Bank have begun a project to create seed stocks to help restore native plants to the UK countryside.

The UK Native Seed Hub, at Kew's West Sussex garden at Wakehurst Place, will grow plants which are difficult to cultivate in restoration programmes.

The project is initially concentrating on plants from lowland meadows or semi-natural grassland.

Since the 1930s, 98% of such habitats have vanished in England and Wales.

The project has started by growing lowland meadow species such as the devil's bit scabious, cuckoo flower, green field-speedwell and harebell at temporary seed production beds in the walled nursery at Wakehurst Place.

Larger permanent seed beds over 2.5 acres are being prepared to harvest seeds that can then be grown on by seed companies for conservation groups and landowners.

Limited seed supplies

The work will be carried out in partnership with the High Weald Landscape Trust's Weald Meadows Initiative, based in West Sussex.

Paul Smith, head of the Millennium Seed Bank, said there was increasing awareness of the importance of UK biodiversity but supplies of suitable seed were limited.

"Commercial companies were often unable to provide seeds genetically adapted to the intended site of restoration," he said.

"Local conservation organisations had insufficient financial clout and technical back-up to influence the market to provide the right kind of seed.

"Therefore, it made complete sense for us to look at how Kew's Millennium Seed Bank could help.

"Use of appropriate native plants will help landowners create diverse habitats, which will ultimately provide a healthier landscape for us all."

The four-year project is being funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, with a gift of £750,000 as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations.

The interim seed production beds at Wakehurst Place are open to the public until the end of September.

From the BBC:

National Trust launches tree avenue survey

The National Trust is launching a survey of all its tree avenues in an attempt to find out more about where they are and the condition they are in.

It estimates it has around 500 avenues, which were first planted to provide a natural picture frame to improve views.

The trust said tree avenues exemplify "man and nature working in harmony".

Property staff and volunteers will be trained to record information on the number and age of trees, species, spacing and their health.

The survey will also look at the wildlife species that rely on the avenues as their habitat.

The National Trust has no central database of information on the avenues and launched a survey of all ancient trees in its care two years ago.

Notable tree avenues found on National Trust land include the 731 trees in the beech avenue at Kingston Lacy, in Dorset, which were a gift from aristocrat William John Bankes to his mother Frances.

Prioritising funding

Despite originally being conceived to provide picturesque views, tree avenues now also provide habitat for wildlife such as bats, which use the rows of trees to navigate, feed around and roost in.

They contain numerous ancient tree specimens and many tell the stories of their creation, such as the Spanish chestnuts at Croft Castle, Herefordshire, which were planted using seeds from the Armada wrecks in 1592.

But many face the threat of diseases, such as acute oak decline, which can spread easily between trees and the survey will help prioritise funding for their future protection.

Brian Muelaner, National Trust ancient tree adviser, said: "Tree avenues are the perfect example of man and nature working in harmony.

"This new survey will give us the opportunity to understand more about these spectacular natural monuments which are rooted in the history of the places they appear."

He added: "They also link habitats - you could have a very important wooded habitat, then an avenue, then another important habitat, and without the avenue they would be two islands and it would be very hard for species to migrate between them."

The trust, which has properties in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, still plants avenues to restore historical design features or replace sites which have been ravaged by disease.

In the 1970s it replanted the south avenue at Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire, the vista of which had been destroyed when Dutch elm disease struck the trees.

From the BBC:

Sun storms 'could be more disruptive within decades'

By Judith Burns Science reporter, BBC News

Within decades, solar storms are likely to become more disruptive to planes and spacecraft, say researchers at Reading University.

The work, published in Geophysical Research Letters, predicts that once the Sun shifts towards an era of lower solar activity, more hazardous radiation will reach Earth.

The team says the Sun is currently at a grand solar maximum.

This phase began in the 1920s - and has lasted throughout the space age.

Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics at Reading, said: "All the evidence suggests that the Sun will shortly exit from a grand solar maximum that has persisted since before the start of the space age.

"In a grand solar maximum, the peaks of the 11-year sunspot cycle are larger and the average number of solar flares and associated events such as coronal mass ejections are greater.

"On the other hand in a grand solar minimum there are almost no sunspots for several decades. The last time this happened was during the Maunder Minimum, between about 1650 and 1700."

The research indicates that most radiation hits the Earth during periods of middling solar activity. Increased radiation is a particular problem for aviation and communications - technology that did not exist the last time the sun cycle ended its grand maximum.

Ice core data

The research is based on evidence from ice cores and tree trunks going back 10,000 years. The team measured levels of nitrates and cosmogenic isotopes which enter our atmosphere and are deposited in ice and organic material.

Professor Lockwood told BBC News: "You can tell by the concentration of nitrates in ice sheets that there has been a solar event. What we showed was that they all cropped up at more middling activity than we have been used to.

"We used this data to say that an unfortunate combination of solar conditions is coming our way in the next few decades.

"It's just a question of how much worse the radiation gets and how long it lasts."

The most disruptive radiation is from solar energetic particles, which are carried away from the Sun by coronal mass ejections, or solar storms, which explode from the Sun's surface.

The evidence seems to indicate that although there are fewer solar storms once the Sun leaves its grand maximum, they are more powerful, faster and therefore carry more particles.

A decline in solar activity also allows more radiation from other parts of the galaxy to enter the Solar System.

In a separate study, a team at Stanford University in California, say they have a developed a technique that could give advance warning of the formation of sunspots before they become visible on the Sun's surface. Sunspots are areas of high magnetic activity. They are significant because these are the areas where solar storms or coronal mass ejections erupt.

Stathis Ilondis and colleagues, writing in the Journal Science, say their findings will help give advance warning of solar storms and the resulting radiation which disrupt communications and transport on Earth.

The Stanford team used a novel technique called helioseismology, which is based on analysis of vibrations on the solar surface. The team discovered that these acoustic signals causing the vibrations moved faster in regions where sunspots were forming up to 65,000km (40,000m) deep.

The resulting sunspots appeared on the surface between one and two days after the differences in vibrations were detected.

Mr Ilondis told BBC News: "It's an early warning for emerging sunspots. This is our main finding."

"We can also predict the size and strength of the sunspot. And if it is a large sunspot then it is more probable to produce some big space weather events like some strong flares."

From the BBC:

Newly sequenced DNA - how the kangaroo got its bounce

By Judith Burns Science reporter, BBC News

Researchers have laid bare the DNA of a kangaroo species for the first time.

An international team of scientists, writing in the Biomed Central journal, Genome Biology, say they have even indentified a gene responsible for the kangaroo's hop.

The group focussed on a small species of kangaroo that inhabits islands off Australia's south and western coasts.

The tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii) is only the third marsupial to have its genome sequenced.

Making up the trio are the Tasmanian devil and the South American opossum.

The team says the first kangaroo genome is a milestone in the study of mammalian evolution. The ancestors of kangaroos and other marsupials diverged from other mammals at least 130 million years ago.

Professor Marilyn Renfree of the University of Melbourne, a lead researcher on the project, said: "The tammar wallaby sequencing project has provided us with many possibilities for understanding how marsupials are different from us."

Key marsupial traits

Dr Elizabeth Murchison, a marsupial specialist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, described the study as "a wonderful tool for studying the evolution of marsupials, and mammals in general, and an impressive piece of work looking at one of Australia's iconic species."

Aside from identifying the "hop" gene, the researchers pinpointed the genes responsible for other key marsupial traits.

For example, tammar wallaby young are only the size of a grain of rice when born. They spend the next stage of their development in their mother's pouch, feeding on her milk.

The pouch is external to the mother's body and therefore the developing animal comes under attack from many pathogens. Antibiotics in the mother's milk are key to the survival of the offspring.

Dr Murchison told BBC News: "It's always really valuable to look at an organism that is a bit different to understand how humans and other mammals have evolved.

"It gives you a perspective on mammalian evolution by looking at mammals that have diverged fairly early on, like the kangaroo.

The researchers also studied the way tammar wallaby genes are turned "on" or "off" at different stages of the animal's life cycle and in different parts of the body.

They hope their work may help produce future treatments for human disease.

"This is the first genome project to be led by Australian scientists," commented Dr Murchison.

"It's been a huge project. It's been going on for almost my entire career. I'm from Australia and it was going on when I was an undergraduate there 10 years ago.

"It was a very early conceived genome project and it has evolved through various different stages as genome sequencing technologies have changed a lot. The team has adapted and kept up and so they have a huge amount of data."

From the BBC:

IBM produces first 'brain chips'

IBM has developed a microprocessor which it claims comes closer than ever to replicating the human brain.

The system is capable of "rewiring" its connections as it encounters new information, similar to the way biological synapses work.

Researchers believe that by replicating that feature, the technology could start to learn.

Cognitive computers may eventually be used for understanding human behaviour as well as environmental monitoring.

Dharmendra Modha, IBM's project leader, explained that they were trying to recreate aspects of the mind such as emotion, perception, sensation and cognition by "reverse engineering the brain."

The SyNAPSE system uses two prototype "neurosynaptic computing chips". Both have 256 computational cores, which the scientists described as the electronic equivalent of neurons.

One chip has 262,144 programmable synapses, while the other contains 65,536 learning synapses.

Man machine

In humans and animals, synaptic connections between brain cells physically connect themselves depending on our experience of the world. The process of learning is essentially the forming and strengthening of connections.

A machine cannot solder and de-solder its electrical tracks. However, it can simulate such a system by "turning up the volume" on important input signals, and paying less attention to others.

IBM has not released exact details of how its SyNAPSE processor works, but Dr Richard Cooper, a reader in cognitive science at Birkbeck, University of London said that it likely replicated physical connections using a "virtual machine".

Instead of stronger and weaker links, such a system would simply remember how much "attention" to pay to each signal and alter that depending on new experiences.

"Part of the trick is the learning algorithm - how should you turn those volumes up and down," said Dr Cooper.

"There's a a whole bunch of tasks that can be done just with a relatively simple system like that such as associative memory. When we see a cat we might think of a mouse."

Some future-gazers in the cognitive computing world have speculated that the technology will reach a tipping point where machine consciousness is possible.

However, Dr Mark Bishop, professor of cognitive computing at Goldsmiths, was more cautious.

"[I] understand cognition to be something over and above a process simulated by the execution of mere computations, [and] see such claims as verging on the magical," he said.

IBM's work on the SyNAPSE project continues and the company, along with its academic partners, has just been awarded $21m (£12.7m) by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

A fairly local item from the BBC:

From the BBC:

Impacts 'more likely' to have spread life from Earth

Asteroid impacts on the Earth may have scattered more life-bearing debris to Mars, Jupiter or beyond our Solar System than previously thought.

Vast computer simulations of debris thrown up from Earth impacts show 100 times more particles end up on Mars than prior studies have shown.

The highest-energy impacts drive debris all the way to Jupiter, which hosts two moons that may be amenable to life.

Only the hardiest of Earth's organisms could have survived the trip, however.

The study considers a reverse of the "panspermia" idea that occupies much of meteoritic research - namely, that the precursors to life, or life itself, may have been delivered by an impact on the early Earth.

Equally, however, Earth impacts may throw up debris that could be loaded with microbes or small, hardy organisms like water bears - which have already demonstrated the ability to survive the harsh conditions of space.

Other simulations have tackled the probability that Earth impacts seeded life in the Solar System, suggesting that significant amounts could have made it to the saturnian moon Titan.

Now, Mauricio Reyes-Ruiz of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and his colleagues have carried out five simulations, each of more than 10,000 particles being ejected from the Earth's surface, described in their as-yet unpublished manuscript.

Each simulation considered impacts of varying violence, with the particles shooting off at ever-increasing speeds.

The particles were then allowed to escape the Earth's gravitational pull and then move according to the gravity of the Sun and the planets for 30,000 simulated years.

When considering the fraction of particles that eventually collide with Venus and the Moon, or simply spiral back toward the Earth, the team's results are consistent with prior simulations.

But they show a marked increase in the number that make it to Mars - and published the first likelihood that an impact particle would make it to Jupiter: a chance of just 0.05% when the particles are launched with a speed of 16.4km per second.

Steinn Sigurdsson, an astrophysicist at Pennsylvania State University in the US, is also carrying out simulations of these "impact ejecta", and his colleage Rachel Worth presented preliminary results at January's American Astronomical Society meeting suggesting similar impact fractions may result.

"Previous studies are definitely 'lower bounds'," Dr Sigurdsson told BBC News, explaining that new limits on impacts come not from new physics, but from better computers.

"They were computationally limited, in the sense that you could only do so much with what you could do back then. The numbers [in the new study] are in the right ballpark. We're getting even higher impact rates than they are, because we're going for much longer. They're doing a large number of particles for short times; we're going to 10 million years."

The real question is whether any ejecta will carry living cargo that can fulfill the "panspermia" hypothesis, but Dr Sigurdsson says that evidence of the hardiness of life has already been found closer to home.

"There are viable bacterial spores that have been found that are 40 million years old on Earth - and we know they're very hardened to radiation."

I'd love a look round there. I wonder if they have Open Days.

I hope they realise I'm only joking, I don't want to end up on a list somewhere.

Yogi, I think that GCHQ sometimes have open days for carefully chosen people such as teachers for potential job recruitment for their students. I doubt if they could have open days for the general public for obvious reasons. As GCHQ is only a few miles away from where I live, it is inevitable that I know one or two people who work there but regardless of what work they do, they are not permitted to tell anyone about their work and that would extend even to office cleaners.

From the BBC:

Cloud simulator tests climate models

By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News

Results from an experiment built to study how clouds form suggests that our knowledge of this subject may need to be revised, Nature journal reports.

Tiny particles (aerosols) form the basis of the "seeds" from which clouds grow.

These seeds form when sulphuric acid and ammonia molecules cluster together - and cosmic rays may help this happen.

But these ingredients create only a tiny fraction of the cloud seeds formed in the atmosphere.

The result surprised Dr Jasper Kirkby who led the research. He told BBC News: "We've shown sulphuric acid and ammonia can't account for nucleation (the very early stages of cloud seed formation) observed in the lower atmosphere.

"We've found that this can only account for a tenth to a thousandth of the rate that's observed. So it's clear from this first set of measurements that our present treatment of aerosols in climate models needs to be revised quite a lot."

Professor Mike Lockwood of Reading University, UK, concurs: "Something else, as yet unknown, is helping enhance the nucleation rates there. Depending on its source, this could even be unexpected additional (human-caused) climate forcing or feedback effect (on the climate)," he explained.

The aim of the study is to create a better understanding of how clouds form and in particular the role of cosmic rays. Dr Kirkby said that the work will lead to better computer models of how the Earth's climate is influenced by clouds.

"Even though aerosols and clouds are very important (in climate modelling) the basic numbers haven't been measured properly and we're doing that," he said.

The so-called Cloud experiment is based at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), just outside Geneva. It consists of a large stainless steel chamber filled with highly purified air into which scientists can infuse trace amounts of the vapours they believe to be involved in the formation of aerosols that can grow to become cloud seeds.

Cosmic role

A beam of particles from one of Cern's particle accelerators provides a controllable source of artificial cosmic rays.

Clouds play an important part in determining global temperatures as they reflect a proportion of the Sun's heat back into space. However, the formation of the aerosols that seed clouds is not well understood and is a source of uncertainty in climate models.

In particular, researchers want to understand the precise role played by cosmic rays. These are charged sub-atomic particles that hit the Earth's atmosphere from space. These create more charged particles - which may enhance the formation of cloud seeds.

The first results from the Cloud experiment at Cern show that cosmic rays cause a ten-fold increase in the formation rate of nanometre-sized aerosol particles. However, Dr Kirkby stressed that these particles are still far too small to seed clouds and so it is premature to conclude that cosmic rays have a significant influence on climate.

The number of cosmic rays that hit the Earth is reduced when the Sun's activity is high. It has been proposed that reduced cosmic rays may lead to reduced cloud formation, causing global temperatures to rise.

Some climate change "sceptics" claim that this process, rather than the burning of fossil fuels, can explain much of the Earth's recent rise in temperature.

Climate scientists point out that there is evidence to show that the sharp rise in global temperatures over the past 15 years cannot be explained by cosmic ray activity. They also point to a vast body of research pointing to rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels to be the cause. According to Professor Lockwood, it is very unlikely that variations in cosmic rays have played a significant role in recent warming.

"The result that will get climate change sceptics excited is that they have found that through the influence of sulphuric acid, ionisation can enhance the rate of water droplet growth. Does this mean that cosmic rays can produce cloud? No," he told BBC News.

Many arguments

Professor Lockwood says that the air-induced aerosols only grew to about 2 nanometres. To influence incoming or outgoing radiation to Earth, droplets must be of the order of 100 nanometres (nm). The growth rates would be really slow from 2 to 100nm because there simply is not enough sulphuric acid in the atmosphere.

"There are a great many arguments as to why the cosmic ray cloud effect is not a major driver of climate change and these results do not yet impinge on those arguments," he said.

Nevertheless, it seems that air ions generated by cosmic rays can helping cloud formation get started. Neither the role of aerosols or the effects of cosmic rays are well understood and this limits the ability of computer models to predict how the Earth's climate will change.

The Cloud experiment is aiming to settle these questions.

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with pictures

Fossil redefines mammal history

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

A small, 160-million-year-old Chinese fossil has something big to say about the emergence of mammals on Earth.

The shrew-like creature is the earliest known example of an animal whose kind evolved to provide nourishment to their unborn through a placenta.

Its features clearly set it apart from marsupial mammals, which adopt a very different reproductive strategy.

The discovery pushes back the date the two groups took up their separate lines, according to Nature magazine.

The journal carries a paper written by a team of palaeontologists led by Zhe-Xi Luo from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, US.

It describes the fossil remains of an animal unearthed in China's northeast Liaoning Province, which has produced so many stunning fossils in recent years.

The new specimen, which the scientists call Juramaia sinensis, records many of the key features of the long-dead organism, including its skull and even impressions of soft tissues such as hair.

But, most importantly, the Juramaia fossil also retains a full set of teeth and forepaw bones.

It is these parts that have enabled palaeontologists to place the creature among the eutherians, or what we more commonly would refer to as placental mammals; as opposed to the metatherians, whose descendants include marsupials such as kangaroos.

"The teeth of Juramaia show all the typical eutherian dental features," Dr Luo explained.

"Specifically, eutherians have three molars, and five premolars. This is in contrast to metatherians characterized by four molars and three premolars.

"Details aside, the difference in teeth of Juramaia allow us to identify it as belonging to the eutherian lineage. In addition, the forelimb and wrist bones show some eutherian features; they completely lack the important diagnostic features of metatherians-marsupials," he told BBC News.

The Liaoning specimen is especially significant because it means the fossil record now sits more comfortably with what genetic studies have been suggesting about the timing of the emergence of the different mammalian lineages.

These DNA investigations had indicated that eutherians should have been in existence much earlier than the previous oldest-known eutherian fossil - a creature called Eomaia, which lived about 125 million years ago.

Juramaia's appearance in the Jurassic Period of Earth history would appear to corroborate what the genetics has been saying.

Today, 90% of all mammals, which include humans of course, are placentals. Knowing the timing of the split from marsupials is fundamental to understanding the full story of the evolution of mammals.

Another interesting aspect of the discovery is what the fossil can tell us about the lifestyles of the early placentals, and it seems they were pretty adept at climbing.

"Juramaia is an insectivorous mammal. It weighed about 15 -17 grams, more or less the size of a shrew," Dr Luo said.

"Its hand structure suggests that it was a capable climber. So we interpreted it to be a tree-climbing insectivorous mammal hunting insects for living," the Carnegie Museum researcher told BBC News.

From the BBC:

Mosquitoes 'disappearing' in some parts of Africa

By Matt McGrath Science reporter, BBC World Service

Malaria-carrying mosquitoes are disappearing in some parts of Africa, but scientists are unsure as to why.

Figures indicate controls such as anti-mosquito bed nets are having a significant impact on the incidence of malaria in some sub-Saharan countries.

But in Malaria Journal, researchers say mosquitoes are also disappearing from areas with few controls.

They are uncertain if mosquitoes are being eradicated or whether they will return with renewed vigour.

Data from countries such as Tanzania, Eritrea, Rwanda, Kenya and Zambia all indicate that the incidence of malaria is dropping fast.

Researchers believe this is due to effective implementation of control programmes, especially the deployment of bed nets treated with insecticide.

But a team of Danish and Tanzanian scientists say this is not the whole story. For more than 10 years they have been collecting and counting the number of mosquitoes caught in thousands of traps in Tanzania.

In 2004 they caught over 5,000 insects. In 2009 that had dropped to just 14.

More importantly, these collections took place in villages that weren't using bed nets.

'Chaotic rainfall'

One possibility for the reduction in numbers is climate change. Patterns of rainfall in these years were more chaotic in these regions of Tanzania and often fell outside the rainy season. The scientists say this may have disturbed the natural cycle of mosquito development.

But the lead author of the study, Professor Dan Meyrowitsch from the University of Copenhagen, says that he is not convinced that it is just the changing climate.

"It could be partly due to this chaotic rainfall, but personally I don't think it can explain such a dramatic decline in mosquitoes, to the extent we can say that the malaria mosquitoes are almost eradicated in these communities.

"What we should consider is that there may be a disease among the mosquitoes, a fungi or a virus, or they're may have been some environmental changes in the communities that have resulted in a drop in the number of mosquitoes"

The research team also found anecdotal evidence that their discovery was not an isolated case.

Prof Meyrowitsch added: "Other scientists are saying they can't test their drugs because there are no children left with malaria.

"They observed this in communities with no large interventions against malaria or mosquitoes. It may be the same scenario that the specific mosquitoes that carry malaria are declining very fast now"

The researchers are unsure if mosquitoes will return to these regions. If they do, one particular cause for concern is the young people who have not been exposed to malaria over the past five or six years since the mosquitoes began to decline.

"If the mosquito population starts coming up again" says Professor Meyrowitsch "and my own assumption is that it will, it is most likely we will have an epidemic of malaria with a higher level of disease and mortality especially amongst these children who have not been exposed."

From the BBC:

Subterranean Amazon river 'is not a river'

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

A subterranean river said to be flowing beneath the Amazon region of Brazil is not a river in the conventional sense, even if its existence is confirmed.

The "river" has been widely reported, after a study on it was presented to a Brazilian science meeting last week.

But the researchers involved told BBC News that water was moving through porous rock at speeds measured in cm, or inches, per year - not flowing.

Another Brazilian expert said the groundwater was known to be very salty.

Valiya Hamza and Elizabeth Tavares Pimentel, from the Brazilian National Observatory, deduced the existence of the "river" by using temperature data from boreholes across the Amazon region.

The holes were dug by the Brazilian oil company Petrobras in the search for new oil and gas fields, and Petrobras has since released its data to the scientific community.

Using mathematical models relating temperature differences to water movement, the scientists inferred that water must be moving downwards through the ground around the holes, and then flowing horizontally at a depth of several km.

They concluded that this movement had to be from West to East, mimicking the mighty Amazon itself.

A true underground river on this scale - 6,000km (4,000 miles) long - would be the longest of its kind in the world by far.

But Professor Hamza told BBC News that it was not a river in the conventional sense.

"We have used the term 'river' in a more generic sense than the popular notion," he said.

In the Amazon, he said, water was transported by three kinds of "river" - the Amazon itself, as water vapour in atmospheric circulation, and as moving groundwater.

"According to the lithologic sequences representative of Amazon [underground sedimentary] basins, the medium is permeable and the flow is through pores... we assume that the medium has enough permeability to allow for significant subsurface flows."

Glacial progress

The total calculated volume of the flow - about 4,000 cubic metres per second - is significant, although just a few percent of the amount of water transported by the Amazon proper.

But the speed of movement is even slower than glaciers usually display, never mind rivers.

And whether water really is transported right across the region in this way is disputed by Jorge Figueiredo, a geologist with Petrobras.

"First of all, the word 'river' should be burned from the work - it's not a river whatsoever," he told BBC News.

Water and other fluids could indeed flow through the porous sedimentary rock, he said, but would be unlikely to reach the Atlantic Ocean because the sedimentary basins containing the porous rock were separated by older rock deposits that would form an impermeable barrier.

"But the main problem is that at depths of 4,000m, there is no possibility that we have fresh water - we have direct data that this water is saline," said Dr Figueiredo.

"My colleagues and I think this work is very arguable - we have a high level of criticism."

End of the affair?

Press reports suggested Professor Hamza was optimistic about confirming his results over the next few years using more direct methods.

But, he said, this was not the case.

"It is well known that geothermal methods are better suited for determining flows with [such small] velocities," he said.

"At lower velocities, experimental techniques may pose considerable difficulties."

It may be possible to examine directly sediments transported into the Atlantic by the subterranean flow, he said, noting that a zone of relatively fresh water extends into the ocean near the mouth of the Amazon.

The research - Indications of an Underground "River" beneath the Amazon River: Inferences from Results of Geothermal Studies - was presented at the 12th International Congress of the Brazilian Geophysical Society in Rio de Janeiro, and has not been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

The team has named the underground flow the "Hamza River".

From the BBC:

Coral could hold key to sunscreen pill

By Michelle Roberts Health reporter, BBC News

Scientists hope to harness coral's natural defence against the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays to make a sunscreen pill for humans.

The King's College London team visited Australia's Great Barrier Reef to uncover the genetic and biochemical processes behind coral's innate gift.

By studying a few samples of the endangered Acropora coral they believe they can synthetically replicate in the lab the key compounds responsible.

Tests on human skin could begin soon.

Before creating a tablet version, the team, led by Dr Paul Long, plan to test a lotion containing the same compounds as those found in coral.

To do this, they will copy the genetic code the coral uses to make the compounds and put it into bacteria in the lab that can rapidly replicate to produce large quantities of it.

Dr Long said: "We couldn't and wouldn't want to use the coral itself as it is an endangered species."

He said scientists had known for some time that coral and some algae could protect themselves from the harsh UV rays in tropical climates by producing their own sunscreens but, until now, they didn't know how.

"What we have found is that the algae living within the coral makes a compound that we think is transported to the coral, which then modifies it into a sunscreen for the benefit of both the coral and the algae.

"Not only does this protect them both from UV damage, but we have seen that fish that feed on the coral also benefit from this sunscreen protection, so it is clearly passed up the food chain."

This could ultimately mean that people might be able to get inbuilt sun protection for their skin and eyes by taking a tablet containing the compounds. But for now, Dr Long's team are focusing their efforts on a lotion.

"Once we recreate the compounds we can put them into a lotion and test them on skin discarded after cosmetic surgery tummy tucks.

"We will not know how much protection against the sun it might give until we being testing.

"But there is a need for better sunscreens."

Another long-term goal of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council-funded study is to look at whether the processes could also be used for developing sustainable agriculture in the Third World.

The natural sunscreen compounds found in coral could be used to produce UV-tolerant crop plants capable of withstanding harsh tropical UV light.

From the BBC - (graphene is a form of carbon which is in the form of incredibly thin sheets of carbon only 1 atom thick and was found by slicing off a sheet from graphite):

Graphene 'could help boost broadband internet speeds'

By Katia Moskvitch Technology reporter, BBC News

Graphene, the strongest material on Earth, could help boost broadband internet speed, say UK researchers.

Scientists from Manchester and Cambridge universities, have found a way to improve its sensitivity when used in optical communications systems.

Their discovery paves the way for faster electronic components, such as the receivers used in fibre optic data connections.

Graphene was discovered in 2004 and has been hailed as a "wonder material".

Optical communications

The material's use in photo-electrical systems is not new.

Scientists had previously managed to produce a simple solar cell by placing microscopic metallic wires on top of graphene sheets and shining light onto them.

Its superconductive properties meant that electrons could flow at high speed with extreme mobility.

However, early graphene solar cells were not very efficient, as the material was only capable of absorbing about 3% of visible light, with the rest shining through without being converted into power.

The latest research, overcomes that problem by using a method, known as plasmonic enhancement, to combine graphene with tiny metallic structures called plasmonic nanostructures.

As a result, its light-harvesting performance is increased by a factor of 20.

"The technology of graphene production matures day-by-day, which has an immediate impact both on the type of exciting physics which we find in this material, and on the feasibility and the range of possible applications," said Prof Kostya Novoselov, one of the lead researchers.

"Many leading electronics companies consider graphene for the next generation of devices. This work certainly boosts graphene's chances even further."

His colleague Professor Andrea Ferrari from the University of Cambridge added that the results showed the material's "great potential in the fields of photonics and optoelectronics".

Details of the team's work have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Wonder material

Graphene was discovered in 2004 after scientists used sticky tape to isolate a single, atom-thick layer of graphite - the same material used in pencils.

It has been identified as the thinnest, strongest and most conductive material in the world; properties which many believe could revolutionise electronics.

Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, both originally from Russia, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in 2010.

On the BBC radio news this morning:

Space junk at tipping point, says report

Scientists in the US have warned Nasa that the amount of so-called space junk orbiting Earth is at tipping point.

A report by the National Research Council says the debris could cause fatal leaks in spaceships or destroy valuable satellites.

It calls for international regulations to limit the junk and more research into the possible use of launching large magnetic nets or giant umbrellas.

The debris includes clouds of minuscule fragments, old boosters and satellites.

Some computer models show the amount of orbital rubbish "has reached a tipping point, with enough currently in orbit to continually collide and create even more debris, raising the risk of spacecraft failures," the research council said in a statement on Thursday.

Situation 'critical'

Hopes of limiting the amount of space junk in orbit suffered two major setbacks in recent years.

In 2007, China conducted an anti-satellite weapon test which destroyed a decommissioned weather satellite, smashing the object into 150,000 pieces larger than 1cm.

Two years later, two satellites - one defunct and one active - crashed in orbit, creating even more debris.

"Those two single events doubled the amount of fragments in Earth orbit and completely wiped out what we had done in the last 25 years," said Donald Kessler, who led the research.

There are 22,000 pieces of debris large enough to track from the ground, but smaller objects could still cause serious damage.

The International Space Station must occasionally dodge some of the junk, which flies around the Earth at speeds of up to 17,500 mph (28,164 km/h).

In June, some debris narrowly missed the space station, forcing its six crew to go to their escape capsules and prepare for an emergency evacuation back to Earth.

The situation is critical, said Mr Kessler, a retired Nasa scientist, because colliding debris creates even more of the junk.

"We've lost control of the environment," he said.

The report makes no recommendations about how to clean up the field of debris.

But it refers to an earlier study for the Pentagon's science think-tank, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).

The Darpa report, dubbed "Catcher's Mitt", suggested a range of technologies, including harpoons, nets and an umbrella-shaped device that would sweep up the debris.

The aim would be to push the debris further towards the earth where it would burn up, or into a higher but safer orbit.

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with pictures

'Hidden' hawksbill turtles found

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC Nature

The team, that has been tracking the turtles for three years, also found that the critically endangered animals nested in these estuaries.

The discovery of this previously unknown sea turtle habitat was published recently in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

It could explain why the species went undetected in the region for so long.

Mangrove forests, which are unique coastal tree and shrub habitats, are also under threat. They could represent an important breeding and nesting site for the species, which was thought to depend on coral reefs

Alexander Gaos, a conservation scientist with San Diego State University and the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative, led the research.

He and his colleagues tracked hawksbills in four countries - El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Ecuador - using satellite tracking tags glued to the turtles' backs.

These trackers revealed that adult hawksbill turtles in the eastern Pacific inhabited in-shore mangrove estuaries.

"For upwards of five decades sea turtle scientists thought hawksbills had [disappeared from] the eastern Pacific Ocean", Dr Gaos told BBC Nature.

"Despite hundreds of sea turtle projects and scientists focusing efforts in the region, no one had located hawksbills.

Our findings help explain this… it's hard to spot hawksbills in mangrove estuaries."

Dr Gaos said that the turtles might be spending their entire lives in these "cryptic habitats".

"Couple that with the fact that there are very few individuals left - hawksbills in the eastern Pacific are one of the world's most endangered sea turtle populations - and it's no wonder researchers didn't know about them!"

The scientists worked with local fishermen and even illegal egg collectors, in order to find hawksbill turtles to fit their tags to.

They hope their revelations about the species' habitat will inform conservation efforts.

Why the turtles were "seeking shelter" in mangroves was not clear.

The scientists think it might be a recent adaptation brought on by a lack of their more typical habitat of coral reefs in the region.

Dr Gaos said: " We now have a better idea of where to look for them, which may help us direct research and conservation of the species, upon which their survival may ultimately depend."

On the BBC radio news this morning:

Click here to see this article with pictures

Endangered species set for stem cell rescue

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

In a novel marriage of conservation and modern biology, scientists have created stem cells from two endangered species, which could help ensure their survival.

The northern white rhino is one of the most endangered animals on Earth, while the drill - a west African monkey - is threatened by habitat loss and hunting.

The scientists report in Nature Methods that their stem cells could be made to turn into different types of body cell.

If they could turn into eggs and sperm, "test-tube babies" could be created.

Such applications are a long way off, but research team chief Jeanne Loring said she had been encouraged by the results on the rhino cells, which they had not really expected to be successful.

The stem cells were made from skin by a process of "re-programming", where retroviruses and other tools of modern cell biology are used to bring the cells back to an earlier stage of their development.

At this stage they are said to be "pluripotent", meaning they can be induced to form different kinds of specialised cell such as neurons and cartilage.

This kind of science entails a fair amount of trial and error, and the researchers expected it would work with the drill because there is lots of experience with primates - but the rhino was a different matter.

"It wasn't easy - we had to do a lot of fiddling to make it work, but it did work," Dr Loring told BBC News.

Along the test-tube

The initial application for this kind of technology might be medicinal.

If animals are suffering from degenerative diseases such as diabetes, stem cells could in principle be turned into replacements for cells that are ceasing to function.

Studies using this approach are underway in humans for health issues as different as heart failure, blindness, stroke and spinal injuries, though routine use is another matter.

But a more exciting idea is to create embryos by inducing the stem cells to make gametes - eggs and sperm.

"Making gametes from stem cells is not routine yet, but there are some reports of it being done with laboratory animals," said Dr Loring.

Last month, a Japanese team reported turning mouse stem cells into sperm, which were then used to father mouse embryos.

Other research teams are looking to cloning to rescue seriously endangered species. But this team believes the creation of new embryos would be a better bet.

"Cloning has not worked well for endangered species - the frequency of success is very low," said Dr Loring.

"And here, you have the possibility to make new genetic combinations rather than cloning which simply reproduces existing animals."

Embryos created this way could potentially be raised in surrogate mothers from closely related species.

'Last-ditch effort'

Robert Lacy, a conservation scientist at the Chicago Zoological Society and chairman of the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group attached to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), said the technique might one day help to bring endangered species back from the brink, although lots more work remained to be done.

"The prospects for using these techniques for continuing the genetic lineages of the last few individuals of a species will be a last-ditch effort, after we have failed to protect the species in earlier, simpler, cheaper, and more effective ways," he said.

"Only when numbers get so low that the genetic contribution of every last animal (including those represented only in frozen cell lines) contributes measurably to the total species diversity - maybe around 10 individuals - would we want to do everything possible to ensure that those genes are transmitted to future generations.

"Tragically, northern white rhinos have undergone just such a decimation."

The white rhinoceros is surviving well in southern Africa despite an increasing threat of poaching.

But with the northern sub-species (Ceratotherium simum cottoni), it is a very different story.

Three years ago, the wild population was down to just four individuals living in a national park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

However, more recent expeditions have failed to locate even this tiny stock; and it is likely that the seven living in captivity are the only representatives left on the planet.

The drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus) - a less colourful cousin of the more familiar mandrill - is not in quite such a parlous state, but numbers in its native habitat in Cameroon and Nigeria are declining, mainly due to hunting, and the species carries an Endangered rating.

The stem cell research brings together conservation scientists with those involved in cutting-edge laboratory work, including Jeanne Loring who, as a world-renowned stem cell researcher, heads the Center for Regenerative Medicine at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

Their immediate aim is to replicate their rhino work with 10 other endangered animals. She would not be drawn on what they all are, but an elephant is among them.

 A really sinister story from the BBC:

Tanks test infra-red invisibility cloak

Tanks could soon get night time invisibility thanks to a cloaking device that masks their infra-red signature.

Developed by BAE Systems, the Adaptiv technology allows vehicles to mimic the temperature of their surroundings.

It can also make a tank look like other objects, such as a cow or car, when seen through heat-sensitive 'scopes.

Researchers are looking at ways to make it work with other wavelengths of light to confer true invisibility.

Hiding out

The hi-tech camouflage uses hexagonal panels or pixels made of a material that can change temperature very quickly. About 1,000 pixel panels, each of which is 14cm across, are needed to cover a small tank.

The panels are driven by on-board thermal cameras that constantly image the ambient temperature of the tank's surroundings. This is projected on to the panels to make it harder to spot. The cameras can also work when the tank is moving.

Its developers would not discuss exactly how the panels are heated and cooled.

Field trials of the thermal cloaking system showed that it made a tank resemble background scenery best from a distance of 300-400m.

BAE Systems has also produced a library containing the heat images of other objects, such as trucks, cars and large rocks, that can be projected on to the panels.

"Earlier attempts at similar cloaking devices have hit problems because of cost, excessive power requirements or because they were insufficiently robust," said Adaptiv project manager Pader Sjolund at BAE Systems in a statement.

By contrast, he explained, Adaptiv panels add to the armour on a fighting vehicle and consume relatively little power.

"We can resize the pixels to achieve stealth for different ranges," he added. "A warship or building, for instance, might not need close-up stealth, so could be fitted with larger panels."

BAE estimates that the technology could be ready to put into production in two years.

From the BBC:

Electric motor made from a single molecule

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Researchers have created the smallest electric motor ever devised.

The motor, made from a single molecule just a billionth of a metre across, is reported in Nature Nanotechnology.

The minuscule motor could have applications in both nanotechnology and in medicine, where tiny amounts of energy can be put to efficient use.

Tiny rotors based on single molecules have been shown before, but this is the first that can be individually driven by an electric current.

"People have found before that they can make motors driven by light or by chemical reactions, but the issue there is that you're driving billions of them at a time - every single motor in your beaker," said Charles Sykes, a chemist at Tufts University in Massachusetts, US.

"The exciting thing about the electrical one is that we can excite and watch the motion of just one, and we can see how that thing's behaving in real time," he told BBC News.

Miniature uses

The butyl methyl sulphide molecule was placed on a clean copper surface, where its single sulphur atom acted as a pivot.

The tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope - a tiny pyramid with a point just an atom or two across - was used to funnel electrical charge into the motor, as well as to take images of the molecule as it spun.

It spins in both directions, at a rate as high as 120 revolutions per second.

But averaged over time, there is a net rotation in one direction.

By modifying the molecule slightly, it could be used to generate microwave radiation or to couple into what are known as nano-electromechanical systems, Dr Sykes said.

"The next thing to do is to get the thing to do work that we can measure - to couple it to other molecules, lining them up next to one another so they're like miniature cog-wheels, and then watch the rotation propagation down the chain," he said.

As well as forming a part of the tiniest machines the world has ever seen, such minute mechanics could be useful in medicine - for example, in the controlled delivery of drugs to targeted locations.

But for the moment, Dr Sykes and his team are in contact with the Guinness Book of World Records to have their motor certified as the smallest ever.

From the Bee Bee Cee:

Male bumblebees seek mates on the hills

By Ella Davies Reporter, BBC Nature

Bumblebee males head for the hills to find mates, according to scientists in Scotland.

Researchers made the discovery while investigating how bees are distributed across their habitat.

The behaviour, called "hilltopping", has been observed in butterflies in the past, but not in bees.

Little is known about how bumblebees find their mates and mating itself is rarely observed.

Professor Dave Goulson from the University of Stirling became interested in the distribution of bumblebees when he encountered so many in his local area.

On a regular run with co-workers in the hills next to the campus, Prof Goulson noticed an abundance of the large, fuzzy pollinators.

This casual observation led to a scientific investigation into what he thought was an unusual distribution of bees in the windswept, flowerless habitat.

The study, published in the journal Ecological Entomology, revealed that it was male bumblebees from four species that were most frequently found on hilltops.

"Male bumblebees are essentially lazy," explained Prof Goulson.

"You can see gangs of them sitting around on flowers in July and August and, in between drinking, they go looking for mates."

With a reduced amount of plants suitable for foraging at the top of the hill, Prof Goulson proposed that the bees favoured location was solely a mating strategy.

The bumblebee expert compared his findings to those of previous studies on hilltopping behaviour in butterflies, flies, and wasps.

Scientists studying these insects found that males and females seeking mates flew to the tops of hills to improve their chances of reproducing.

"It's quite a neat, simple 'dating' mechanism for butterflies but nobody knew that bees did it," said Prof Goulson.

Secretive sex lives

For bumblebees it seems that only the males make the effort to be seen..

Although his results showed males congregating on hill tops, Prof Goulson did not record any females taking advantage of the gathering.

The striking insects are surprisingly mysterious and their behaviour, and particularly their reproductive strategies have been the subject of study for many years.

In the late 19th Century, Charles Darwin studied the flight paths of male bumblebees in his garden and found that they left pheromone markers along a regularly patrolled circuit.

But no observations have since been made of females reacting to these signals.

"There are some well-known things that male bumblebees do that have always been assumed to be something to do with how they find mates," Prof Goulson told BBC Nature.

"But none of them are terribly well understood because you almost never see [the bees] actually mating."

INTELLIGENT INSECTS

• Some of the cleverest members of the insect world, bumblebees are able to navigate the most efficient route from flower to flower and back to their nest.
• Honeybees' brains have evolved to make the insects better at learning new odours in the morning. This seems to help the insects sniff out flowering plants and forage for nectar more efficiently.
• Some ant species may give bees a run for their money in the brain stakes. When the fragile nest of the tiny house-hunting ant is damaged beyond repair, knowledgable ants that have explored the area guide their nest-mates to a new site.
• African Camponotus fellah ants form long-term memories via the same basic process as us. The insects' brains make new proteins that "consolidate knowledge". In a test, they learned to associate a scent with food. When presented with the same scent three days later, the ants moved their mouthparts in expectation of food

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with video clip, audio clip and pictures

African fossils put new spin on human origins story

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

The ancient remains of two human-like creatures found in South Africa could change the way we view our origins.

The 1.9-million-year-old fossils were first described in 2010, and given the species name Australopithecus sediba.

But the team behind the discovery has now come back with a deeper analysis.

It tells Science magazine that features seen in the brain, feet, hands and pelvis of A. sediba all suggest this species was on the direct evolutionary line to us - Homo sapiens.

"We have examined the critical areas of anatomy that have been used consistently for identifying the uniqueness of human beings," said Professor Lee Berger from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg

"Any one of these features could have evolved separately, but it is highly unlikely that all of them would have evolved together if A. sediba was not related to our lineage," the team leader informed BBC News.

It is a big claim and, if correct, would sideline other candidates in the fossil record for which similar assertions have been made in the past.

Theory holds that modern humans can trace a line back to a creature known as Homo erectus which lived more than a million years ago. This animal, according to many palaeoanthropologists, may in turn have had its origins in more primitive hominins, as they are known, such as Homo habilis or Homo rudolfensis.

The contention now made for A. sediba is that, although older than its "rivals", some of its anatomy and capabilities were more advanced than these younger forms. Put simply, it is a more credible ancestor for H. erectus, Berger's team claims.

The sediba specimens were unearthed at Malapa in the famous Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, just to the northwest of Jo'burg.

They were pulled from a pit - a depression left in the ground by a cave complex that had lost its roof through erosion over time.

Identified as an adult female and a juvenile male, the two individuals were quite possibly mother and son. What seems certain is that they died together in some tragic accident that saw them either fall into the cave complex or become stuck in it. After death, their bodies were washed into a pool and cemented in time along with the remains of many other animals that got trapped in the same way.

In the months since their 2010 announcement, Professor Berger and colleagues have subjected the remains to further detailed assessment.

Age: The latest dating technologies were applied to the sediments encasing the fossils. Whereas original estimates had put the age of the remains at somewhere between 1.78 and 1.95 million years old, the new analysis has narrowed this window of uncertainty to just 3,000 years. The new age is now between 1.977 and 1.98 million years old. The refined dating is important, says the team, because it puts A. sediba deep enough in time to be a realistic ancestor to H. erectus.

Dr Robyn Pickering, from the University of Melbourne, Australia, who led the dating, told BBC News: "This is a very interesting time in human evolution because it is when we think we should be seeing the beginnings of our genus, Homo. Previously, we've had very few fossils from this time period, so the sediba fossils are remarkable in that they are so complete."

Brain: A high-resolution X-ray scan of the male specimen's skull has produced a virtual cast of its braincase. This was carried out at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble. From this, the researchers estimate an adult A. sediba's brain to have been about 440 cubic centimetres in volume, or about the size of a medium grapefruit. This is smaller than much older fossils in the record such as the famous "Lucy" specimen, Australopithecus afarensis (3.2 million years), but, intriguingly, the shape is more human-like, especially at the front. This may hint at the start of the re-organisation of the brain that would be necessary to make us what we are today.

Pelvis: The pelvis is short and broad like a human pelvis. A more ancient creature like Lucy has a flatter and more flaring pelvis. A popular idea has been that the modern human pelvis evolved in tandem with the gradual growth in brain volume - facilitating the birth of babies with bigger heads. A. sediba gives the lie to this theory, says the team, because it had a modern-looking pelvis while possessing a small brain.

Hand: The right-hand of the female is very nearly complete. It is looks far more like a modern human hand than an ape hand. Its fingers are shorter relative to the thumb than in a chimpanzee. And yet, it appears to have possessed powerful muscles for grasping, suggesting A. sediba spent a lot of time clambering through the branches of trees. The team also argues that the dexterity would have been there to make simple tools.

Foot: The ankle joint is mostly human-like in form and there is some evidence for a human-like arch and Achilles tendon. But A. sediba possessed an ape-like heel and lower tibia, or shin bone. The scientists think this combination may have led to a distinctive type of walk when the creature was not climbing in trees.

Whatever the correctness of the analysis, the creature certainly has a fascinating mix of features - some archaic, some modern.

Independent scientists describe the fossils as exquisite and utterly fascinating.

Dr William Harcourt-Smith from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, commented: "One lineage of Australopithecus almost certainly led into the first member of our own genus called Homo, and from then eventually emerged modern humans.

"But some of them are side branches, and we're trying to work out which ones are and which ones aren't - and that's why this finding is so important. In many ways, these fossils are the 'smoking gun' just before the emergence of our own genus."

And Professor Chris Stringer, from London's Natural History Museum, told BBC News: "This isn't the end of the story. What may be happening is that there were several australopithecine forms all evolving human-like features in parallel as they turned to meat-eating and tool-making and moving greater distances.

"The question now is to pull out of this mess which one is really the ancestor of the genus Homo. We know there are more remains to come from this incredible site. Let's see if other individuals also show this mix of features."

From the BBC:

UK joins laser nuclear fusion project

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

The UK has formally joined forces with a US laser lab in a bid to develop clean energy from nuclear fusion.

Unlike fission plants, the process uses lasers to compress atomic nuclei until they join, releasing energy.

The National Ignition Facility (Nif) in the US is drawing closer to producing a surplus of energy from the idea.

The UK company AWE and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory have now joined with Nif to help make laser fusion a viable commercial energy source.

At a meeting this week sponsored by the Institute of Physics and held at London's Royal Society, a memorandum of understanding was announced between the three facilities.

The meeting attracted scientists and industry members in an effort to promote wider UK involvement with the technology that would be required to make laser fusion energy plants possible.

"This is an absolutely classic example of the connections between really high-grade theoretical scientific research, business and commercial opportunities, and of course a fundamental human need: tackling pressures that we're all familiar with on our energy supply," said David Willetts, the UK's science minister.

The idea of harvesting energy from nuclear fusion is an old one.

The UK has a long heritage in a different approach to accomplishing the same goal, which uses magnetic fields; it is home to the Joint European Torus (Jet), the largest such magnetic facility in the world and a testing ground for Iter, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.

But magnetic fusion attempts have in recent years met more and more constricting budget concerns, just as Nif was nearing completion.

Part of the problem has been that the technical ability to reach "breakeven" - producing more energy than is consumed in fusion reactions - has always seemed distant. Detractors of the idea have asserted that "fusion energy is 50 years away, no matter what year you ask".

But Mr Willetts told the meeting that was changing.

"I think that what's going on both in the UK and in the US shows that we are now making significant progress on this technology," he said. "It can't any longer be dismissed as something on the far distant horizon."

Ignition keys

The laser fusion idea uses pellets of fuel made of isotopes of hydrogen called deuterium and tritium. A number of lasers are fired at the pellets in order to compress the fuel to just hundreths of its starting size.

In the process, the hydrogen nuclei fuse to create helium and fast-moving subatomic particles called neutrons whose energy, in the form of heat, can be captured and used for the comparatively old-fashioned idea of driving a steam turbine.

The aim is to achieve "ignition" of the fuel for which Nif is named - a self-sustaining fusion reaction that would far surpass breakeven.

Nif's director Ed Moses told the meeting that ignition was drawing ever nearer.

"Our goal is to have ignition within the next couple of years," he said.

"We've done fusion at fairly high levels already. Even on Sunday night, we did the highest fusion yield that has ever been done."

Dr Moses said that a single shot from the Nif's laser - the largest in the world - created a million billion neutrons and produced for a tiny fraction of a second more power than the world was consuming.

But for ignition, that number would need to rise by about a factor of 1,000.

The UK leads the High-Power Laser Energy Research (Hiper), a pan-European project begun in 2005 to move laser fusion technology toward a commercial plant.

"We recognised several years ago with Nif... and the ignition that was likely to occur, that the profile of fusion would be raised," said John Collier, the director of Hiper.

"We were thinking: 'what would be a way forward, how could Europe define a strategic route for laser power production to take advantage of these developments?' And that was the kernel of Hiper."

Both Hiper and Life, a similar effort at Nif, estimate that a functioning laser power plant would need to cycle through more than 10 fuel pellets each second - a million each day. Nif, since its completion in 2009, has undertaken only 305 such shots in its quest for ignition.

Professor Collier said the technological challenges that presented were incredible opportunities.

"The BMW plant in Oxford is producing one Mini a minute - you think of the complexity of that and you wouldn't think that's possible," he said.

"But these are tractable things; Lego bricks, bullets - these things are made in huge quantities and there are huge intellectual property opportunities for those people, those industries that get in."

From the BBC:

Jelly batteries: Safer, cheaper, smaller, more powerful

By Hamish Pritchard Science Reporter

A new polymer jelly could be the next big step forward for lithium batteries.

The jelly replaces the volatile and hazardous liquid electrolyte currently used in most lithium batteries.

Researchers from the University of Leeds hope their development leads to smaller, cheaper and safer gadgets.

Once on the market, the lithium jelly batteries could allow lighter laptop computers, and more efficient electric cars.

In 2006, Dell recalled four million laptop batteries because of concerns that they might catch fire. Dell replaced them with batteries that used lower-performance electrodes, but these batteries were significantly larger.

Battery size still dictates the size and weight of most laptops, say the developers of the new battery.

Electronics manufacturer Apple got around the safety problem for their lightweight laptops with a solid polymer electrolyte, but in doing so, the power output of the computers suffered.

Overheating is also an issue for electric cars. Developers have had to use reinforced, steel-clad battery housings, multiple fuses and circuits to protect the battery during charging. All of these contribute to the cost and weight, and hence efficiency, of electric cars.

Thermal runaway

The newly developed jelly batteries should prevent "thermal runaway", during which batteries can reach hundreds of degrees and catch fire.

The Leeds-based researchers are promising that their jelly batteries are as safe as polymer batteries, perform like liquid-filled batteries, but are 10 to 20% the price of either.

The secret to their success lies in blending a rubber-like polymer with a conductive, liquid electrolyte into a thin, flexible film of gel that sits between the battery electrodes.

"The polymer gel looks like a solid film, but it actually contains about 70% liquid electrolyte," explained the study's lead author, Professor Ian Ward from the University of Leeds.

"The remarkable thing is that we can make the separation between the solid and liquid phase at the point that it hits the electrodes.

"Safety is of paramount importance in lithium batteries. Conventional lithium batteries use electrolytes based on organic liquids; this is what you see burning in pictures of lithium batteries that catch fire. Replacing liquid electrolytes by a polymer or gel electrolyte should improve safety and lead to an all-solid-state cell," said Professor Peter Bruce from the University of St Andrews, who was not involved in the study.

From the BBC:

High blood pressure genetic clues

By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News

More than 20 new sections of genetic code have been linked to blood pressure by an international team of scientists.

Almost everyone will carry at least one of the genetic variants, according to studies published in Nature and Nature Genetics.

Researchers believe their findings could be used to develop new treatments.

The British Heart Foundation said lifestyle was still key to a healthy blood pressure.

High blood pressure - or hypertension - can run in families as well as being influenced by obesity, exercise and the amount of salt in the diet.

While the lifestyle risks are well known, the genetic element of hypertension has been poorly understood.

Researchers now say they have made a "major advance" in understanding the role of genes.

In the first study, scientists from 24 countries around the world analysed data from more than 200,000 people.

They identified 16 new points on the genome which were linked to blood pressure.

One of the lead researchers, Prof Mark Caulfield, from Barts and The London Medical School, said each genetic variant was in at least 5% of people, while some of the more common ones were present in up to 14% of people.

"This is having an influence across the population," he said.

Uncovering the genetic basis of blood pressure has revealed processes in the body which could one day be targeted with drugs.

One series of chemical reactions involving nitric oxide, which opens up blood vessels, has been highlighted as a potential target.

Gene puzzle

Prof Caulfield said: "There is substantial potential for moving the findings from the lab to the clinic.

"There are, in development or in existence, drugs which could be considered."

However, researchers say they have still uncovered only 1% of the genetic contribution to blood pressure.

A second study, presented in Nature Genetics, identified a further six new stretches of genetic code.

The British Heart Foundation's medical director, Prof Peter Weissberg, said: "Researchers from across the world have now identified some of the genes linked to blood pressure control, which could pave the way for new treatments in the future.

"But your genes are only one piece of the puzzle. You are less likely to have high blood pressure if you stick to a healthy diet, do plenty of exercise, and maintain a healthy weight."

From the BBC:

New tests promise toughest Olympics for cheats

By Matt McGrath Science reporter, BBC World Service, Bradford

The scientist in charge of anti-doping at next year's London Olympics says the games will be the toughest yet for cheats.

Prof David Cowan strongly indicated that a new test to catch blood dopers could be deployed for the first time.

Speaking at the British Science Festival in Bradford, Professor Cowan confirmed there would also be a new test for human growth hormone.

He said a new lab would aim to carry out about 6,000 tests during the games.

While scientists have developed tests for almost all forms of doping in sport, the one that has caused them the most trouble has been the practice of athletes storing and transfusing their own blood.

Known as autologous blood doping, it increases the number of red blood cells and gives a substantial boost to an athlete's endurance by allowing them to carry more oxygen.

Several high profile Olympic competitors have been accused of the practice over the past 30 years, while scientists have failed to develop an effective test.

But according to Professor Cowan, who is based at King's College London, that might be about to change.

Staying ahead

At this meeting he gave details of a new test that would compare the age of blood samples by looking at the genetic component of red blood cells.

"We're working on a scheme where the nuclear material, not in the nucleus itself, but the RNA material in the cell has been shown to change and we are hoping that using those markers we'll be able to distinguish stored blood from blood that's in your body naturally," he said.

Scientists have developed a successful test for another type of manipulation called homologous blood doping. This involves taking blood from relatives or friends of a similar blood group. It was highly prevalent in cycling and winter sports through the 1990s and the early parts of the 21st century.

Researchers working with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) succeeded in developing a test based on differences in blood cell surface antigens. It led to the sentencing of cyclist Tyler Hamilton who won a gold medal at the Olympic games in Athens in 2004 but failed a test for homologous blood doping shortly afterwards.

In reaction to the introduction of this test, dopers became more reliant on their own blood supplies. In 2006 Spanish police raided a clinic in Madrid run by a Dr Eufemiano Fuentes. The so-called Operation Puerto uncovered a systematic, highly organised doping ring based mainly on storing and transfusing blood. Dozens of cyclists and other athletes were said to have been involved.

Now, without directly confirming that the test for autologous doping would be available by next Summer, Professor Cowan gave the strongest hint yet that it would be ready in time.

"I would never guarantee what we can deliver by a particular time, that's the nature of research, we're working very quickly on this, the progress is very exciting. I would put it the other way round, if you're an athlete be careful - we may have a test in time," he said.

Professor Cowan did confirm that an improved test for human growth hormone would be available next Summer and that tests for gene doping were also in the pipeline. His message to dopers was simple - cheats will be caught if they come to London.

From the BBC:

Earth’s rarest metals ranked in a new 'risk list'

By Leila Battison Science reporter, Bradford

The relative risks to the supply of some of Earth's rarest elements have been detailed in a new list published by the British Geological Survey (BGS).

So-called "technology metals" like indium and niobium are extracted from the Earth and are used in a wide range of modern digital devices and green technologies.

They are therefore increasingly in demand from global industries.

The list highlights 52 elements most at risk from "supply disruption".

Incorporating information about each metal's abundance in the Earth, the distribution of its deposits, and the political stability of the country in which it is found, the list ranks these highly desired elements on a relative scale.

Speaking at the British Science Festival in Bradford, Andrew Bloodworth from the BGS explained that "while we won't run out of these metals any time soon, the risks to supply are mostly human".

Geopolitics, resource nationalism, accidents, and the lengthy delay between the discovery of a resource and its efficient extraction are all factors that could threaten the supply of the metals on which our modern technology has come to rely.

This is an especially important factor, given the notable monopoly that certain countries have on supply.

For example, 97% of all rare earth elements (REEs), including neodynium and scandium, are produced in China.

Pace of demand

Antimony, the element most "at risk", is used extensively for fire proofing, but is deposited by hot fluids inside the Earth's crust and extracted mostly in China.

In fact, China dominates global production of all the elements on the BGS list, being responsible for extraction of over 50% of them.

Mr Bloodworth said that he hoped this new list would help to inform policy makers of the need to diversify supply sources, as well as making manufacturers and the public aware of where these critical metals come from.

There are many more locations on Earth where these critical metals can be mined, including varied geological deposits from Southern Africa, Australia, Brazil, and the US. Professor Frances Wall of the Camborne School of Mines said that mining these alternative deposits would "take away the monopoly of current suppliers of these metals".

In the move towards a more low-carbon economy, digital and renewable energy technologies rely heavily on metals which, just 10 years ago, would have been of little interest to industry.

Today, these elements are ubiquitous, being used widely in smart mobile devices, flat screens, wind turbines, electric cars, rechargeable batteries and many others.

Mobile phones embrace the use of these technology metals, with lithium batteries, indium in the screen, and REEs in the circuitry.

With over 50 million new phones being made every year, the "volume of technology metals required is astonishing and the pace of demand is not letting up" said Alan McLelland of the National Metals Technology Centre.

Recycling of the metals used in phones is currently too expensive and energy-intensive, but Mr McLelland hopes that the risks outlined in the BGS list will alert the manufacturers to the need to make the embedded metals more accessible for recycling.

As the supply and demand of the elements change, the BGS anticipates the list being updated annually.

From the BBC:

Trollope to rework Austen's Sense and Sensibility

Joanna Trollope is to write a contemporary version of Jane Austen's classic novel Sense and Sensibility, which will be published in autumn 2013.

It will form part of a series of six HarperFiction novels that will rework Austen's books, although other authors have yet to be announced.

"This is a great honour and an even bigger challenge," said Trollope.

Trollope, whose novels include The Choir and Friday Nights, is to chair next year's Orange Prize for Fiction.

"It's a hugely exciting proposal to attempt the reworking of one of the best novels written by one of our greatest novelists," she said.

"This is a project which will require consummate respect above all else - not an emulation, but a tribute."

HarperFiction's publishing director Louise Joyner, said: "Joanna Trollope and Jane Austen share an extraordinary ability to combine heart-rending plots with a social acuity which has powerful resonances for contemporary audiences."

Sense and Sensibility, which reveals the fortunes of the Dashwood daughters following the death of their father, is one of Austen's most famous novels.

It has been adapted for both television and cinema - Emma Thompson won an Oscar for her film version of the novel in 1995.

She wrote the script for the movie, in which she co-starred with Kate Winslet.

Andrew Davies' 2008 BBC mini-series starred David Morrissey and Dominic Cooper.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Sense and Sensibility.

From the BBC:

Sell-by dates to be scrapped to cut food waste

Food sell-by dates are to be removed in a bid to cut waste and save shoppers money, ministers have announced.

The UK throws away £12bn of edible food each year and critics say confusing packaging is partly to blame.

Defra is advising manufacturers to only include use-by and best-before dates and remove sell-by and display-until labels, which relate to stock rotation.

But the British Retail Consortium said a better approach would be to educate people on what the dates mean.

Defra says five million tonnes of edible food is discarded by UK households annually - the equivalent to £680 for a household with children.

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman said: "We want to end the food labelling confusion and make it clear once and for all when food is good and safe to eat.

"This simpler and safer date labelling guide will help households cut down on the £12 billion worth of good food that ends up in the bin."

Under the guidance, foods likely to require a use-by date - meaning they could become dangerous to eat - include soft cheese, ready-prepared meals and smoked fish.

Foods likely to require only a best-before date - meaning they may lose quality but are still safe to consume - include biscuits, jams, pickles, crisps and tinned foods.

But stock rotation information - such as sell-by dates - should be removed from packaging altogether, says the government, as it is this which confuses some shoppers.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is also backing the new advice.

"A number of different dates can be found on our food, so we need to make sure that everyone knows the difference between them," said the FSA's Liz Redmond.

"We always emphasise that use-by dates are the most important, as these relate to food safety."

The guidance was produced in consultation with food manufacturers, supermarkets, trade associations, consumer groups and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP).

However, the British Retail Consortium said the government was tackling the problem of food waste in the wrong way.

Food Director Andrew Opie said a better approach would be to educate consumers so they are clear on the difference between best-before and use-by dates.

"Helping consumers understand that food past its best-before date can still be eaten or cooked could contribute to reducing food waste and saving people money," he said.

"The government should be spreading that message, not focusing on retail practices."

From the BBC:

Click here to see this article with video clip and pictures

Dinosaur feather evolution trapped in Canadian amber

Samples of amber in western Canada containing feathers from dinosaurs and birds have yielded the most complete story of feather evolution ever seen.

Eleven fragments show the progression from hair-like "filaments" to doubly-branched feathers of modern birds.

The analysis of the 80-million-year-old amber deposits is presented in Science.

The find, along with an accompanying article analysing feather pigment, adds to the idea that many dinosaurs sported feathers - some brightly coloured.