From the BBC:

UK enforces Pegi video game ratings system

Video game ratings using the Pegi (Pan-European Game Information) system have become legally enforceable in the UK.

Retailers that sell titles with ratings of 12, 16 or 18 years to children below the age limits will be subject to prosecution.

To prepare for the move, the government decided to drop a parallel ratings system run by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification).

Organisers say it will help families "make informed decisions".

In addition to the age ratings, packaging will also feature diagrams warning if the title includes bad language, drugs, discrimination, fear, gambling, sex, violence or online gameplay with other people.

Simplified system

The move was first announced by the previous government in its Digital Britain Report in June 2009 which had followed the Bryon Review into Safer Children in a Digital World.

It had noted that "having a dual classification system and two sets of symbols often made things confusing for the consumer", adding that it was vital to switch to a single system.

The report also highlighted that Pegi's system often led to stricter age ratings than the BBFC might have given.

Under the new system the Games Ratings Authority (GRA) - a division of the Hertfordshire-based Video Standards Council - will be responsible for rating titles using Pegi's criteria:

• Games are rated for 12-years and over if they include non-graphic violence to human or animal characters, a slightly higher threshold of violence to fantasy characters or significant nudity or bad language.
• Games are rated 16-years and over if the depiction of violence or sexual activity looks the same as it would do in normal life. Drug and tobacco references also trigger the age limit.
• Games are rated 18-years and over if there is a "gross" level of violence likely to make the viewer feel a sense of revulsion.

The GRA also has the power to ban a title if necessary, although it has said it expects to only do this "very rarely".

Only two titles have ever been banned in the UK - Manhunter 2 and Carmageddon. Both were the result of rulings by the BBFC and both decisions were later overturned.

The GRA can also suggest tiles are not suitable for children under the age of six or under the age of three, but these are not legally enforceable.

'Shocking' violence

Video game trade body Ukie has welcomed the development, saying that having one regulator will make it easier for developers to judge what rating their title would be likely to be given before submitting it, allowing them to adjust the content if needed.

To publicise the move the group has relaunched its Ask About Games website with information to help parents make informed choices.

The launch comes in the wake of editorials published by websites Rock Paper Shotgun, PCWorld and Cnet criticising the level of violence in some of the titles shown at last month's E3 video games conference.

The trailers for titles including Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Far Cry 3 and The Last of Us - in which the main character was shown shooting another person in the face at point-blank range with a shotgun - were highlighted as being instances where the level of violence had been "shocking".

The issue may become even more acute next year when Microsoft and Sony are rumoured to unveil next-generation versions of their consoles capable of more detailed graphics.

But Prof Tanya Byron, a consultant clinical psychologist and author of the report which led to the change in law, has stressed the positive benefits of the technology.

"Video games can be a great educational resource that can also fuel children's creativity," she said.

"It would be great to see parents taking an interest in their children's video game playing. This can involve taking direct control of what games their children play at home, how they play them and for how long, through taking note of the Pegi ratings."

Link to the Ask About Games website:

http://www.askaboutgames.com/

Link to the PEGI website page which goes into more details as to the age ratings and what each of the warning symbols means:

http://www.pegi.info/en/index/id/33/

On the Ask About Games website there is an informative video presented by Jo Whiley.

From the BBC:

Moon formation: Was it a 'hit and run' accident?

Scientists have proposed a fresh idea in the long-running debate about how the Moon was formed.

What is certain is that some sort of impact from another body freed material from the young Earth and the resulting debris coalesced into today's Moon.

But the exact details of the impactor's size and speed have remained debatable.

In a report online to be published in Icarus, researchers suggest that the crash happened with a much larger, faster body than previously thought.

Such theories need to line up with what we know about the Moon, about the violent processes that set off the creation of moons, and what computer simulations show about the more sedate gravitational "gathering-up" that finishes the job.

In recent years, scientists' best guess for how the Moon formed has been that a relatively slowly moving, Mars-sized body called Theia crashed into the very young Earth.

That would have heated both of them up and released a vast cloud of molten material, much of which cooled and clumped together to give rise to the Moon.

That would suggest that the Moon is made up of material from both the early Earth and from Theia, which should be somewhat different from one another.

Impact factor

What complicates that story is a number of observations of "isotopic compositions" - the ratios of naturally-occurring variants of some atoms - taken from the Earth and from lunar samples.

While the Moon has an iron core like Earth, it does not have the same fraction of iron - and computer models supporting the Theia impact idea show just the same thing.

However, the ratio of the Earth's and the Moon's oxygen isotopes is nearly identical, and not all scientists agree on how that may have come about.

Confounding the issue further, scientists reporting in Nature Geoscience in March said that a fresh analysis of lunar samples taken by the Apollo missions showed that the Moon and the Earth shared an uncannily similar isotope ratio of the metal titanium.

That, they said, gave weight to the idea that the Moon was somehow cleaved from the Earth itself.

Now, Andreas Reufer, of the Center for Space and Habitability in Bern, Switzerland, and colleagues have run computer simulations that suggest another possibility: that a far larger and faster-moving body made an even more glancing blow with the young Earth.

They said this body would have lost only a small amount of material and most of it would have continued on after the "hit-and-run".

That results in a much hotter disc of debris from the collision, but matches up with what would be needed to make a Moon-sized body.

The authors suggest that since most of what became the Moon would have been liberated by the impact from the Earth, similarities between the isotope fractions should be more pronounced.

More analyses of different elements within lunar samples - and a great deal more computer simulations that result in a Moon like our own - will be needed to settle the debate.

From the BBC:

Hotmail to be replaced by Outlook.com in Microsoft switch

Microsoft is overhauling its free webmail service, dropping the Hotmail brand it has used since acquiring the product in 1998, and adopting the name Outlook.com.

The revamped service will help sort messages as they arrive and allow users to make internet calls on Skype.

It said the move would help tackle the problem of "cluttered" inboxes.

The action may also be designed to win over users of Google's rival Gmail service.

Microsoft said that in many cases email had become a "chore" because its users accounts had become "overloaded" with material.

Its solution is to automatically sort messages into different areas to distinguish between emails from contacts, newsletters, package delivery notices, social network posts and other identifiers determined by the account holder.

In addition it is taking steps to link the Outlook account with other services the user might have subscribed to.

"We are giving you the first email service that is connected to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google, and soon, Skype, to bring relevant context and communications to your email," the firm's Chris Jones said on its blog.

"In the Outlook.com inbox, your personal email comes alive with photos of your friends, recent status updates and tweets that your friend has shared with you, the ability to chat and video call - all powered by an always up-to-date contact list that is connected to your social networks."

Targeting Google

In what may be perceived as a dig at Google, Mr Jones added that the firm would not scan email content or attachments in order to sell the information to advertisers or others.

He also announced that web versions of the firms Office apps were built-in, potentially helping it counter competition from other web-based application suits such as Google Docs and Zoho Docs.

Outlook.com also links up with Microsoft's Skydrive cloud storage, allowing users to send photos and other documents via the service to avoid the risk of going over their attachment size limit.

This could pose a threat to the rival Google Drive service as well as Dropbox, Sugarsync and others.

'Cleaned up'

Mr Jones said the firm had built a "brand new service from the ground up". But Matt Cain, an analyst at the tech consultants Gartner, played down the suggestion of a major leap forwards.

"Outlook.com represents reverse-consumerisation - taking a ubiquitous business tool and recrafting it for the consumer market," he told BBC.

"There really is no new technology here - the filtering tools have been around for some time as well as the social network integration.

"What is new is the cleaned up user interface, and the marketing spin, and the tight integration with office web apps and Skydrive, and the forthcoming integration with Skype."

Microsoft is offering the service in a "preview" mode for the time being and has not announced an official release date. While it advises users to upgrade, Hotmail subscribers can stick with the old system if they wish - at least for now.

From the BBC:

Palm trees 'grew on Antarctica'

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Scientists drilling deep into the edge of modern Antarctica have pulled up proof that palm trees once grew there.

Analyses of pollen and spores and the remains of tiny creatures have given a climatic picture of the early Eocene period, about 53 million years ago.

The study in Nature suggests Antarctic winter temperatures exceeded 10C, while summers may have reached 25C.

Better knowledge of past "greenhouse" conditions will enhance guesses about the effects of increasing CO2 today.

The early Eocene - often referred to as the Eocene greenhouse - has been a subject of increasing interest in recent years as a "warm analogue" of the current Earth.

"There are two ways of looking at where we're going in the future," said a co-author of the study, James Bendle of the University of Glasgow.

"One is using physics-based climate models; but increasingly we're using this 'back to the future' approach where we look through periods in the geological past that are similar to where we may be going in 10 years, or 20, or several hundred," he told BBC News.

The early Eocene was a period of atmospheric CO2 concentrations higher than the current 390 parts per million (ppm )- reaching at least 600ppm and possibly far higher.

Global temperatures were on the order of 5C higher, and there was no sharp divide in temperature between the poles and the equator.

Frozen thermometers

Drilling research carried out in recent years showed that the Arctic must have had a subtropical climate.

But the Antarctic presents a difficult challenge. Glaciation 34 million years ago wiped out much of the sediment that would give clues to past climate, and left kilometres of ice on top of what remains.

Now, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) has literally got to the bottom of what the Eocene Antarctic was like, dropping a drilling rig through 4km of water off Wilkes Land on Antarctica's eastern coast.

The rig then drilled through 1km of sediment to return samples from the Eocene. With the sediment came pollen grains from palm trees and relatives of the modern baobab and macadamia.

Crucially, they contained also the remnants of tiny single-celled organisms called Archaea.

The creatures' cell walls show subtle molecular changes that depend on the temperature of the soil surrounding them when they were alive. The structures are faithfully preserved after they die.

They are, in essence, tiny buried thermometers from 53 million years ago.

Together, the data suggest that even in the darkest period of Antarctic winter, the temperature did not drop below 10C; and summer daytime temperatures were in the 20Cs.

The lowland coastal region sported palm trees, while slightly inland, hills were populated with beech trees and conifers.

Dr Bendle said that as an analogue of modern Earth, the Eocene represents heightened levels of CO2 that will not be reached any time soon, and may not be reached at all if CO2 emissions abate.

However, he said the results from the Eocene could help to shore up the computer models that are being used to estimate how sensitive climate is to the emissions that will certainly rise in the nearer term.

"It's a clearer picture we get of warm analogues through geological time," he said.

"The more we get that information, the more it seems that the models we're using now are not overestimating the [climatic] change over the next few centuries, and they may be underestimating it. That's the essential message."

Back to the past - a journalist shows some school children a computer from the past - the Commodore 64.

As this article from the BBC consists principally of a video clip which cannot be posted here, I'll just put a link to the article.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19055707

Sad news today from the BBC:

Jodrell Bank Observatory founder Sir Bernard Lovell dies

Pioneering astronomer and physicist Sir Bernard Lovell has died aged 98.

Sir Bernard, who was born near Bristol and studied in the city, was the founder of University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory.

Jodrell Bank and the surrounding Cheshire countryside is dominated by the Lovell Radio Telescope, which was conceived by Sir Bernard.

Professor Brian Cox, who knew Sir Bernard, said he was "an inquisitive scientist all the way".

A book of condolence has been opened at the observatory's Discovery Centre.

Radar to telescope

Sir Bernard was born in Oldland Common, Gloucestershire, in 1913 and studied at the University of Bristol before joining the University of Manchester's Department of Physics in 1936.

During World War II he led a team developing radar technology, for which he was later awarded an OBE.

Following the war, he returned to the university and set about planning the observatory.

His iconic 76m (249ft) telescope was completed in 1957. Within days of it becoming operational, it tracked the rocket that carried Sputnik 1 into orbit.

The structure remains the third largest steerable telescope in the world and plays a key role in global research on pulsating stars, testing extreme physics theories including Einstein's general theory of relativity.

The telescope and his other contributions to radio astronomy led to him being knighted in 1961.

A spokesman for the university said Sir Bernard was "warm and generous".

He said the astronomer had "retained a keen interest in the development of science at Jodrell Bank and beyond".

The spokesman added: "Indeed he continued to come in to work at the Observatory until quite recently when ill health intervened."

'A pioneer'

Sir Bernard was also an accomplished musician, a keen cricketer and an internationally-renowned arboriculturalist who created an arboretum at Jodrell Bank.

He is survived by four of his five children, 14 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

Professor Cox, who met Sir Bernard after joining the University of Manchester in the 1990s, said: "I remember once I went to his house and immediately he said 'ah Cox, tell me about this muon' [a sub-atomic particle].

"He knew that I was doing particle physics and thought back to the last time he had thought about such things - he'd been thinking about astronomy for decades - and that's what he wanted to talk about.

"That was him - all his life, he was a scientist.

"He was a pioneer of radio astronomy and almost invented the subject.

"He built the leading telescope and that radio study of the sky has contributed a vast amount to our understanding of the universe."

From the BBC:

YouTube app vanishes from Apple's next version of iOS

The app for video clip service YouTube is missing from the next version of Apple's iOS6 operating system.

Apple said the app had been removed because its licence to produce the program had expired.

The Apple-made version of the YouTube app has been a staple on the iPhone's iOS since the device was first launched in 2007.

Apple said Google was developing its own version of the app which should appear soon.

'Worse experience'

The fourth test, or beta, version of iOS6 was released by Apple on 6 August. The final public version is expected to be ready in September prior to the rumoured launch of a new iPhone.

Soon after the software was released many tech news sites noticed it lacked the YouTube app, even though the Apple-made version of this program has been available for years.

Not all YouTube functions have disappeared from iOS6 beta, said Apple in its statement, as users can still play video by visiting YouTube with a web browser. They can also still upload films to YouTube from a phone or tablet.

Financial terms of the licensing deal that let Apple create the YouTube app have not been disclosed.

Apple would not be drawn on whether it would be replacing the YouTube app with another pre-installed video sharing service. It has already taken a similar step with Google maps, as iOS6 will use its own mapping app.

No date has been given for when Google's version of the YouTube app will appear.

"This is all about Apple removing Google from its operating system completely," said Stuart Miles, founder and head of tech news site Pocket-lint. He wondered if the end result of this strategy would be for Apple to drop Google as its default search engine on iOS.

"In a couple of years you will just ask Siri for results and you will not care where that comes from," he said.

Gaining control of the YouTube app was good for Google, he said, because it let it update and change the program as needed. It would also likely mean that ads would appear on clips.

"There's no reason why you won't start having pre-roll adverts," he said, "which is going to mean a worse experience for users."

From the BBC:

Stressed men drawn to heavy women

By Nick Crumpton BBC News

When placed under stressful situations, men rate larger women as more attractive, new research has shown.

British researchers found that men exposed to tasks that were designed to put them under pressure preferred a wider range of female body sizes.

They conclude that stress can act to alter judgments of potential partners.

The work by a team from London and Newcastle is published in the open access journal Plos One.

"There's a lot of literature suggesting that our BMI (body mass index) preferences are hard-wired, but that's probably not true," co-author Dr Martin Tovee, from Newcastle University, told BBC News.

Dr Tovee and his colleague, Dr Viren Swami, have previously researched what factors could alter BMI preferences, including hunger and the influence of the media.

But through this new work they aimed to investigate whether known cross-cultural differences in body size preferences linked to stress were also mirrored in short-term stressful situations.

"If you look at environments where food is scarce, people's preferences for body size in a potential partner are shifted. [The preference] appears to be much heavier compared to environments where there's plenty of food and a much more relaxed atmosphere," he explained.

"If you're living a far more stressful, subsistence lifestyle, you're going to have higher stress levels."

To simulate heightened stress, a test group of men were placed in interview and public speaking scenarios and their BMI preferences compared against a control group of non-stressed men.

The results indicated that the change in "environmental conditions" led to a shift of weight preference towards heavier women with the men considering a wider range of body sizes attractive.

Flexible preferences

"These changes are comparatively minor in comparison to those you get between different [cross-cultural] environments. But they suggest certain factors which might combine with others and cause this shift," Dr Tovee said.

The research supports other work that has shown perceptions of physical attractiveness alter with levels of economic and physiological stress linked to lifestyle.

"If you follow people moving from low-resource areas to higher resource-areas, you find their preferences shift over the course of about 18 months. In evolutionary psychology terms, you try to fit your preferences to what works best in a particular environment," said Dr Tovee.

Moreover, the researchers were keen to emphasise how environmental conditions could alter the popular perception of an "ideal" body size.

"There's a continual pushing down of the ideal, but this preference is flexible. Changing the media, changing your lifestyle, all these things can change what you think is the ideal body size," he said.

From the BBC:

London 2012: Olympic Games 'greenest ever'

London 2012 has been the greenest Olympics ever, the commission set up to monitor the environmental impact of the Games has announced.

The independent Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 said recycling and regeneration had been a success.

But it said much more could be done to minimise the impact of future Olympic Games on people and the planet.

Commission chairman Shaun McCarthy said London had set high standards for future Olympic host cities to follow.

Transport success

Previous Olympics have been criticised for the environmental damage they caused through waste, construction and transport.

Sustainability was at the heart of London's bid for the Olympics and the commission said organisers had largely succeeded in achieving it.

For example, the venues were told to be made of at least a quarter recycled materials - that included using disused gas pipes in the Olympic Stadium.

The Olympic Park was praised for regenerating a derelict area and benefiting wildlife, and the commission said it was amazed by the success of public transport.

But it said the challenges for future host cities were off the Olympic site, including the social ethics of some of the manufacturers and sponsors associated with the Games.

'Cheerful volunteers'

Mr McCarthy said the use of temporary venues for the Games was "unprecedented".

And he hailed Stratford in east London, the site of the Olympic Park, as one of the best connected places in Europe after long-term investment in public transport infrastructure.

Mr McCarthy said: "In the main, London's sustainable Games have been a massive success but like the best sports teams there is a need to continuously improve.

"I wish the IOC [International Olympics Committee] and future host cities success in proving they can do better."

He also said an increase in sports participation was likely to be short lived and it would take "investment in community and school sport and a clear plan to tackle the current obesity crisis".

He added: "The cheerful volunteers made the experience a joy. I even saw some people on the Tube talking to each other! Why can't it be like that all the time?"

From the BBC:

Google is changing the way it calculates search results in an effort to make sure legal download websites appear higher than pirate sites.

The world's biggest search engine announced the change in a blog post on its website.

The move has been welcomed by record companies in the UK and Hollywood film studios.

Movie and music firms have complained in the past that Google should have been doing more to fight piracy.

They say searching for an artist, song or film often brings up pages of illegal sites, making it hard to find a place to download a legal version.

From next week, search results will take into account the number of "valid copyright removal notices".

Sites with more notices will rank lower, although Google has not said what it considers a valid notice.

'Devil in the details'

The BPI, which represents record labels in the UK, has welcomed the news.

Chief executive Geoff Taylor said: "We have argued for some time that sites with a lot of illegal content should feature lower in search rankings, based on the notifications we send to Google.

"Consumers overwhelmingly want and expect the top search results for entertainment content to feature legal, licensed services.

"We will look carefully at how much impact this change will have in practice, but we welcome the announcement from Google and will be pressing other search engines to follow suit."

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) said it was "optimistic" about the changes.

"We will be watching this development closely - the devil is always in the details," said MPAA senior executive president Michael O'Leary.

From the BBC:

Galaxy cluster's 'starburst' surprises astronomers

Astronomers have seen a huge galaxy cluster doing what until now was only theorised to happen: making new stars.

Most galaxy clusters - the largest structures in the Universe - are "red and dead", having long since produced all the stars they can make.

But cluster formation should, according to theory, include a cooling phase, resulting in blue light from new stars.

Writing in Nature, researchers say they have seen evidence that the enormous Phoenix cluster makes 740 stars a year.

The cluster, some seven billion light-years away, is formally called SPT-CLJ2344-4243 but the researchers have renamed it for the constellation in which it lies.

It contains the mass equivalent to about two and a half million billion Suns.

While astronomers are getting better at spotting these huge conglomerates of galaxies - the Planck space telescope has reported notable hauls of them - there is still much to learn about how they form and what goes on within them.

Just as planets are thought to form by the eventual coalescence of matter that is around after star formation, galaxy clusters are believed to form through colossal galactic mergers - another event that sharp-eyed astronomers have managed to get a picture of, on more than one occasion.

Blue blazes

Theory has it that in addition to a central black hole, clusters have a great deal of gas at their cores, sprayed from nearby galaxies and supernovae, that should eventually cool down enough to draw together and start the process of star formation anew.

Yet astronomers have only ever seen red, dead regions at clusters' cores; the lack of evidence for the idea was called the "cooling flow problem".

But a find by the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica, with follow-up observations by the space-based Chandra X-ray Observatory, found one bright cluster among several new finds.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology led an international team that went on to use a total of 10 different telescopes worldwide, each looking at different colours of light, to characterise the surprise Phoenix finding.

The Phoenix cluster showed particularly bright emission in the ultraviolet range of the spectrum, corresponding to hundreds of young stars and suggesting that 740 were being born each year.

"Not only is it the most X-ray luminous cluster in the Universe, but the central, most massive galaxy is forming stars at an unmatched rate," said Michael McDonald of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US.

The findings shed light on the interplay between the supermassive black holes that appear to be at the centres of all big galaxies, and the vast tracts of gas that surround them.

These black holes are the source of a kind of tug-of-war - their gravity draws material inward, but they also release huge amounts of energy in the form of jets that tend to heat the gas and keep it at a distance.

The researchers believe that the black hole at the core of the Phoenix cluster's central galaxy must not be putting out much energy at the time we now see it.

Commenting on what he called the "tussle" between the central black hole and the surrounding material, the UK's Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees, from the University of Cambridge, said: "It's not able to hold that infall of gas at bay, and this gas is falling in and forming stars.

"That's a very extreme phenomenon, that's what's so special about this system. This is a fascinating step toward putting this picture together of the tussle."

From the BBC:

Click here to see this story with video clips

Camouflage robot changes colour for disguise

By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News

A robot that can change colour to either blend in with or stand out from its surroundings has been created by scientists.

The machine, designed by researchers at Harvard University, was inspired by the camouflage skills of sea creatures such as octopuses, cuttlefish and squid.

Like these cephalopods, the robot has a soft, rubbery body and can move with flexibility.

The study is published in the journal Science.

Professor George Whitesides, an author of the paper, said: "Conventional robotics is a pretty highly developed area, and if you look at various robots you find that most are basically built on the body plan of a mammal.

"Our question is: Why do you have to do that? Why not think about organisms that are soft, that might have quite different structures and ways of moving and strategies for camouflage. And the obvious place to look is underwater."

In 2011, the research team published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that outlined details of a "soft robot" that could crawl and bend under obstacles.

The machine was made from silicon-based polymers, and its movement was driven by air pumping through tiny cylinders in its four "legs".

Now the scientists have added another layer of complexity to these robots by giving them the ability to disguise themselves.

The camouflage-bots are covered in a network of tiny channels. As different dyes are pumped in, the robots can quickly change their appearance.

As well as changing colour, hot or cold fluids can be pumped into robots, enabling them to be thermally camouflaged, and fluorescent liquids allow them to glow in the dark.

Currently, the fluid is pulled in from a reservoir, but in the future it could be incorporated into the robot's body.

Search and rescue

Lead author Stephen Morin said the soft machines had similarities with organs or tissues and could have medical applications.

He explained: "The idea is that if you have a system that can simulate muscle motion very well and a system that can transport fluid, by combining those you can fabricate that device to fit a specific surgical problem.

"And in planning for surgery or training, you can use something like this in guilt-free way."

The team also said the machines could have a future in search and rescue.

Prof Whitesides said: "For that kind of application, having it be able to advertise itself, for example, in a way that stood out against the dark would be a good thing."

He said the fact that the robots were lightweight, flexible and also relatively inexpensive was advantageous.

He explained: "The nice thing about these systems is that their properties are very different from conventional robots. You get pretty complicated motions from pretty simple systems.

"For a mission like search and rescue, these kind of robots could in principle be throwaway. So if you took a $25,000 robot and sent it in and the building falls down, then that is a real issue. If you send one in which is $100 and the roof falls in, you really don't care."

From the BBC:

Cereal bars: Healthy image a myth - Which?

The image of cereal bars as a healthy snack is a "myth", according to a study by Which?

The consumer group found all but one of the 30 bars it analysed were high in sugar, with more than half containing over 30% sugar.

One bar, Nutri-Grain Elevenses, contained nearly four teaspoons - more than in a small can of cola and 20% of the recommended daily allowance.

Other snacks it analysed were found to be high in fat and saturated fat.

The Tracker Roasted Nut bar, for example, was almost a third fat.

Meanwhile, six of the seven cereal bars targeted at children were high in saturated fat, the study found.

And Monster Puffs, a cereal bar marketed to children and described as "great for your lunchbox", contained 43.5% sugar - more than two teaspoons.

'Myth'

Which? compared the nutritional content of the bars using the manufacturers' information and applied traffic light labelling to see if the levels of fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt were high, medium or low.

The Nakd Apple Pie was the only bar in the study that did not contain any added sugar, while the Alpen Light Apple and Sultana was the only one to have three green traffic lights for fat, saturated fat and salt.

Which? is calling for manufacturers to reduce sugar and fat in food products marketed to children and for tighter controls over the way they are promoted.

Which? executive director Richard Lloyd said: "People often choose cereal bars in the belief they're healthier than chocolate or biscuits, but our research shows this can be a myth."

A spokeswoman for Kellogg's, which makes the Nutri-Grain Elevenses bar and some of the other snacks tested, said: "We're confused as to why anyone would call a Nutri-Grain Elevenses snack a cereal bar.

"If you've eaten one you know it's not. It's a baked bar and looks and eats much more like a muffin or cake.

"We bake it like a cake and market it as a mid-morning snack.

"In fact, compared to other similar mid-morning snacks, it's one of the choices that has slightly less sugar than the norm."

From the BBC:

'Solid smoke' material aerogel gets added strength

Recent improvements to a type of material known as aerogel could lead to a new generation of highly insulating clothing, a major conference has heard.

Aerogels have been around for a long time, and have been described as "solid smoke" because they are so light.

But these traditional types - made from silica - are fragile and brittle.

By altering the composition and structure of these materials, scientists have now produced aerogels that are hundreds of times stronger.

The advances were described at the 244th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia.

Traditional aerogels developed decades ago and made from the silica that is found in beach sand are brittle, and break and crumble easily.

The new varieties are made by altering the innermost architecture of traditional silica aerogels.

Scientists use polymers, a plastic-like material, to reinforce the networks of silica that extend throughout an aerogel's structure.

Potential uses

Another way is to make them from polyimide, an incredibly strong and heat-resistant polymer, then insert brace-like cross-links to add further strength to the structure.

"The new aerogels are up to 500 times stronger than their silica counterparts," said Mary Ann Meador from Nasa's Glenn Research Center in Ohio, US.

"A thick piece actually can support the weight of a car. And they can be produced in a thin form, a film so flexible that a wide variety of commercial and industrial uses are possible."

She said the new types of aerogel could yield highly insulating clothing that would keep people warm with less bulk than traditional "thermal" garments.

It could also potentially be used in the walls of fridges and freezers, reducing their thickness and increasing storage space.

The Nasa Glenn scientist also said the space agency was exploring use of a heat shield made from flexible aerogel that would inflate like a balloon when spacecraft enter a planetary atmosphere.

The material might also be suitable for insulating spacesuits. However, it is probably not be suitable for clothing used by firefighters, which requires protection beyond the 302C (575F) limits of this substance.

From the BBC:

Family trees: Tracing the world's ancestor

By Dr Yan Wong Evolutionary biologist

A question one Radio 4 listener asked about the bloodline between Jesus and King David raised a wider genealogical issue. How many generations does it take before someone alive today is the ancestor of everyone on the planet?

Listeners to the More or Less programme on Radio 4 have been challenging me to answer any fiendish question they can throw at me.

A question about Jesus's genealogy was rather interesting and the answer has astounding ramifications.

The Bible says Jesus was a descendant of King David. But with 1,000 years between them, and since King David's son Solomon was said to have had about 1,000 wives and mistresses, couldn't many of Jesus's peers in Holy Land have claimed the same royal ancestor?

Theory tells us that not only would all of Jesus's contemporaries be descended from King David, but that this would probably be the case even if Solomon had been into monogamy.

We can make this sort of prediction because over the past 15 years or so, these ideas have been studied as part of the research into understanding patterns in our own genome.

The most successful approach has been to go backwards in time, taking a sample of people and imagining the patterns of inheritance in their ancestral family tree.

When applied to the question of who is descended from whom, the results can surprise even the professionals.

That's because geneticists normally study biological information - DNA - that people inherit from just one of their parents.

Just like a surname, or the male lines of descent quoted in the Bible, these generate lineages that shrink or expand rather slowly. That's why we expect the proportion of Smiths in the phone-book to fluctuate only a little from decade to decade.

The surprise comes if we look at inheritance from both parents. Here, the numbers change drastically as the generations go by. For instance, we have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on.

Each generation back, we multiply the number by two. This leads to what is called an exponential increase: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 and so on.

It's not long before we hit huge numbers. Take the specific case of Jesus and King David.

The number of generations between them is at least 35. Luke lists 42 generations down the male line, and Matthew gives an incomplete list of 27.

These numbers agree reasonably well with an average time between generations of 25 or 30 years - an estimate taken from documented historical records from Iceland and Canada.

So back in the time of David, Jesus would have had at least 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 (35 times); in other words 2^35 - or more than 34 billion potential ancestors. That's far more than the total population of the world, of course.

This is a good illustration of what's been called the "genealogical paradox".

In short, we seem to have too many ancestors. The solution is that we have to take inbreeding into account. Many of these ancestors are duplicates; the same person can found through multiple routes in the family tree.

You are unlikely to be the product of inbreeding between recent ancestors. So initially, your increase in ancestors will indeed be almost exponential.

But as your family tree increases to thousands upon thousands, you will inevitably find many obscure branches that have interbred. That's when the numbers start tailing off.

Even so, by that time, you will have collected a large number of people in your ancestry. So it's not surprising that any two people in any one country probably won't need to go back many generations before finding a common ancestor.

More specifically, imagine the simplest case of a population of a constant size - say a million (the approximate size of the Holy Land at the time of Jesus).

If people in this population meet and breed at random, it turns out that you only need to go back an average of 20 generations before you find an individual who is a common ancestor of everyone in the population.

If you go back on average 1.77 times further again (35 generations) everyone in the population will have exactly the same set of common ancestors (although they will be related, of course, through different routes in all the different family trees).

In fact about 80% of the people at that time in the past will be the ancestors of everyone in the present. The remaining 20% are those who have had no children, or whose children have had no children, and so on - in other words, people who were genetic dead-ends.

Apply that to the case of King David. According to this model, he would be a common ancestor of the whole population of the Holy Land somewhere between 20 and 35 generations after his life. That's even without Solomon sowing his seed so widely.

That's why everyone alive in the Holy Land at the time of Jesus would have been able to claim David for an ancestor.

Reductions in population caused by events such as the Assyrian invasions will have produced more inbred family trees, and shortened the number of generations needed to reach a common ancestry.

What about the wider ramifications? A single immigrant who breeds into a population has roughly 80% chance of becoming a common ancestor. A single interbreeding event in the distant past will probably, therefore, graft the immigrant's family tree onto that of the native population. That makes it very likely that King David is the direct ancestor of the populations of many other countries too.

How far do we have to go back to find the most recent common ancestor of all humans alive today? Again, estimates are remarkably short. Even taking account of distant isolation and local inbreeding, the quoted figures are 100 or so generations in the past: a mere 3,000 years ago.

And one can, of course, project this model into the future, too. The maths tells us that in 3,000 years someone alive today will be the common ancestor of all humanity.

A few thousand years after that, 80% of us (those who leave children who in turn leave children, and so on) will be ancestors of all humanity. What an inheritance!

From the BBC:

'Talking cars' tested in Michigan to cut road accidents

Hundreds of vehicles fitted with kit that lets them "talk" to each other are being tested on the roads of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The technology is designed to alert drivers to potentially dangerous situations in an effort to reduce the number of accidents.

The year-long effort is organised by the US Department of Transport.

It says that the data gathered could ultimately lead to a change in the law requiring such safety equipment.

"This cutting-edge technology offers real promise for improving both the safety and efficiency of our roads," said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. "That is a winning combination for drivers across America."

More than 32,000 people died on the US's roads in 2011 due to crashes.

The government suggests 80% of the number of accidents that did not involve drugs, alcohol or some such "driver impairment" could ultimately be prevented if the technology works.

Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen have all provided vehicles to be used. The project has a $25m (£15.8m) budget.

Driver alert

Nearly 500 trucks and buses are already equipped with the communication devices which rely on technology similar to wi-fi. By the start of October that number is set to rise to about 2,800.

The kit will let vehicles send data to each other and selected parts of the city's infrastructure.

Drivers will be warned if:

• There is a risk they could crash into another vehicle at crossings where their view is restricted.
• If another vehicle is changing lanes in their blind spot.
• If there is a danger of a rear-end collision because the car in front of them has braked suddenly.

"[It] has the potential to be the ultimate game-changer in roadway safety," said National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's David Strickland.

"But we need to understand how to apply the technology in an effective way in the real world."

Alternatives to the technologies involved in the project are already on the market.

For example Bosch offers an ultrasonic sensor which registers objects three metres to a car's side which the drive may not be able to see. Nissan has also introduced a car-mounted radar which monitors the road ahead and applies the brakes if it thinks a collision is imminent.

The US government is attempting to create a superior system which does not rely on kit being able to "see" a problem - but one expert warned that the innovation's success would be limited until every vehicle was required to have the necessary gear.

"This is a classic case of standards needing to be applied," Prof David Bailey, an automotive expert at Coventry Business School, told the BBC.

"There is evidence that consumers are willing to pay for this kind of safety equipment, but to move the market on you might need some kind of regulatory change.

"So the amount of time it will take before we see it become widespread will depend on both whether the technology is viable and how quickly governments are likely to demand that vehicles implement it. If they don't push hard it could still be 30 to 40 years away."

In Europe Volvo is working on an alternative wireless technology in which cars "follow" a lead vehicle, mimicking its actions and forming a convoy.

The technology is designed to be used on motorways allowing the driver to hand over control and relax during part of the journey.

From the BBC:

Uranium from seawater idea boosted with shrimp shells

A happy coincidence in the seafood industry has raised the prospects of harvesting uranium - the fuel source for nuclear power - from seawater.

Oceans hold billions of tonnes of uranium at tiny concentrations, but extracting it remains uneconomical.

A report at the 244th meeting of the American Chemical Society described a new technique using uranium-absorbing mats made from discarded shrimp shells.

A range of improved approaches were outlined at a symposium at the meeting.

The developments are key to a future nuclear power industry. Uranium is currently mined from ore deposits around the world, but there are fears that demand may outstrip the supply of ore as nuclear power becomes more widespread.

At issue is the tremendously low concentration of uranium in seawater: about three parts per billion, so that just 3.3mg exist in a full tonne of water. As a result, extracting it is an inherently costly process.

Much work carried out in Japan in recent decades has sought to address that.

Researchers there came up with a design of a mat of plastic fibres impregnated with molecules that both lock onto the fibres and preferentially absorb uranium. That work culminated in a 2003 field test that netted a kilogram of the metal.

The mats can reach 100m in length, suspended underwater at depths up to 200m. They are withdrawn and rinsed with an acid solution that frees the uranium, and the cycle is repeated.

Research has focussed on improving both the braided fibres of the mat and the "ligand" that captures the uranium, which has most often been a molecule called poly-acrylamidoxime.

Several groups at the conference said they had been working on variations on this molecular theme, or variants of porous "nanoparticles" made of silica (the stuff of sand) or carbon.

Robin Rogers of the University of Alabama, who organised the symposium, outlined an improvement developed in his own group: seafood shells.

He said that in the wake of both Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill in the region, "we began working with the Gulf Coast Agricultural and Seafood Co-operative... and with the shrimpers and crabbers there, and found they were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to get rid of their waste [shells]".

"We discovered an 'ionic liquid' - a molten salt - could extract a very important polymer called chitin directly from shrimp shells," he added.

Chitin is a long-chain molecule that is the principal component in crustaceans' shells, but its toughness and its ability to be "electrospun" into fibres that can be made into mats make it an ideal sustainable and biodegradable choice for uranium harvesting.

While research is continuing, there is still some way to go to reach cost parity with the more mature - but more environmentally damaging - technology of mining uranium ores.

"We have not reached a point where we can 'downselect' to a [single] technology, but we have shown that we can double the capacity of what the Japanese have done," Dr Rogers said.

"But the economic analysis being done at the University of Texas has told us that we're not good enough yet, even in today's economy, so we have to improve."

The work is promising enough, though, to begin to remove a concern about the sustainability of those terrestrial sources and any stumbling block that may present to growth in the nuclear power industry.

From the BBC:

English language 'originated in Turkey'

By Jonathan Ball BBC News

Modern Indo-European languages - which include English - originated in Turkey about 9,000 years ago, researchers say.

Their findings differ from conventional theory that these languages originated 5,000 years ago in south-west Russia.

The New Zealand researchers used methods developed to study virus epidemics to create family trees of ancient and modern Indo-European tongues to pinpoint where and when the language family first arose.

Their study is reported in Science.

A language family is a group of languages that arose from a common ancestor, known as the proto-language.

Linguists identify these families by trawling through modern languages for words of similar sound that often describe the same thing, like water and wasser (German). These shared words - or cognates - represent our language inheritance.

According to the Ethnologue database, more than 100 language families exist.

The Indo-European family is one of the largest families - more than 400 languages spoken in at least 60 countries - and its origins are unclear.

The Steppes, or Kurgan, theorists hold that the proto-language originated in the Steppes of Russia, north of the Caspian Sea, about 5,000 years ago.

The Anatolia hypothesis - first proposed in the late 1980s by Prof Colin Renfrew (now Lord Renfrew) - suggests an origin in the Anatolian region of Turkey about 3,000 years earlier.

To determine which competing theory was the most likely, Dr Quentin Atkinson from the University of Auckland and his team interrogated language evolution using phylogenetic analyses - more usually used to trace virus epidemics.

Fundamentals of life

Phylogenetics reveals relatedness by assessing how much of the information stored in DNA is shared between organisms.

Chimpanzees and humans have a common ancestor and share about 98% of their DNA. Because of this shared ancestry, they cluster together on phylogenetic - or family - trees.

Like DNA, language is passed down, generation to generation.

Although language changes and evolves, some linguists have argued that cognates describing the fundamentals of life - kinship (mother, father), body parts (eye, hand), the natural world (fire, water) and basic verbs (to walk, to run) - resist change.

These conserved cognates are strongly linked to the proto-language of old.

Dr Atkinson and his team built a database containing 207 cognate words present in 103 Indo‐European languages, which included 20 ancient tongues such as Latin and Greek.

Using phylogenetic analysis, they were able to reconstruct the evolutionary relatedness of these modern and ancient languages - the more words that are cognate, the more similar the languages are and the closer they group on the tree.

The trees could also predict when and where the ancestral language originated.

Looking back into the depths of the tree, Dr Atkinson and his colleagues were able to confirm the Anatolian origin.

To test if the alternative hypothesis - of a Russian origin several years later - was possible, the team used competing models of evolution to pitch Steppes and Anatolian theory against each other.

Commenting on the paper, Prof Mark Pagel, a Fellow of the Royal Society from the University of Reading who was involved in earlier published phylogenetic studies, said: "This is a superb application of methods taken from evolutionary biology to understand a problem in cultural evolution - the origin and expansion of the Indo-European languages.

"This paper conclusively shows that the Indo-European languages are at least 8-9,500 years old, and arose, as has long been speculated, in the Anatolian region of what is modern-day Turkey and spread outwards from there."

Commenting on the inclusion of ancient languages in the analyses, he added: "The use of a number of known calibration points from 'fossil' languages greatly strengthens the conclusions."

However, the findings have not found universal acceptance. Prof Petri Kallio from the University of Helsinki suggests that several cognate words describing technological inventions - such as the wheel - are evident across different languages.

He argues that the Indo-European proto-language diversified after the invention of the wheel, about 5,000 years ago.

On the phylogenetic methods used to date the proto-language, Prof Kallio added: "So why do I still remain sceptical? Unlike archaeological radiocarbon dating based on the fixed rate of decay of the carbon-14 isotope, there is simply no fixed rate of decay of basic vocabulary, which would allow us to date ancestral proto-languages.

"Instead of the quantity of the words, therefore, the trained Indo-Europeanists concentrate on the quality of the words."

Prof Pagel is less convinced by the counter-argument: "Compared to the Kurgan hypothesis, this new analysis shows the Anatolian hypothesis as the clear winner."

On the BBC website:

The observable Universe and beyond

By Anthony Aguirre Associate Professor of Physics at the University of California

The further we look into space, the further back in time we go and the last thing we see is left-overs from the Big Bang. This pattern in the sky could give us clues to the Universe next door.

The Universe that we can observe is fantastically large. If the entire Earth were scaled down to a nearly invisible mote of dust, even the most nearby stars would be many miles distant. Those stars are light-years away, and we're now receiving light that was emitted by them years ago.

Using state-of-the-art instruments, astronomers can see back through 13.7 billion years, viewing regions of space that — due to the cosmic expansion — are now about 45 billion light-years away.

At earlier times, the Universe was so dense that light could not propagate, so this distance forms a spherical boundary in all directions. The ball inside this boundary — our "observiball" if you will — contains all we can observe.

Astronomers peer into the distant Universe through progressively earlier concentric shells within this ball: back through the era of galaxy formation, through "dark ages" prior to the first stars, and finally to the opaque outer shell.

Light from this shell arrives unimpeded, but stretched by the cosmic expansion into microwaves. By observing this Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), cosmologists have an amazingly clear view of the very early Universe.

Astronomers have done an amazing job at mapping out this "observiball", and over the past several decades cosmologists have assembled a very solid standard model of Big-Bang cosmology that well and accurately describes the evolution of the Universe to the present day, from the time of the CMB and even somewhat earlier.

The now fairly well-understood observiball is enormous. But it's almost certainly not everything that exists - its boundary just limits what we can see, not what is.

Inflating the ball

What's outside the ball? How big is the Universe beyond? How did it form? Potential answers are provided by a theory developed in the early 1980s known as "inflation". This theory holds that in its early history, the observable Universe underwent a period of exponential expansion, doubling in size many dozens of times, growing our observiball a tiny fraction of the size of an atomic nucleus to that of, say, a beach ball.

Such expansion would stretch space and smooth matter, while leaving small density variations that show up in the CMB.

Details of these predicted variations have been confirmed by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and other experiments, and will be further tested by the Planck satellite, data from which is currently under analysis.

As well as explaining the state of the observiball's surface, inflation has implications for what happened far beyond that surface. For a start, if inflation produced our ball, it also predicts that the full Universe is at least a million or so times as large, and more if inflation lasted a long time.

How long would inflation have lasted? Probably forever. The same physics responsible for inflation's success causes a strange side-effect - in most cases, inflation does not end everywhere at once, but always continues somewhere.

In this "eternal inflation" picture, inflation perdures forever, and forms the backdrop for the Universe as a whole. Here and there, inflation ends and gives rise to a slower expansion, and perhaps the formation of matter, light, galaxies, stars, and beings like us. In this picture, the Universe just a short way beyond the edge of the observiball is an endless, roiling see of inflation, and all that we can see sits inside just one tiny floating bubble.

That's not just poetic imagery. A key mechanism by which space can change inflationary states, or can stop inflating, is by the formation of bubbles. Such bubbles form spontaneously, then expand at nearly the speed of light, within one might be another period of inflation, or non-inflation like what we observe. If eternal inflation is right, our observiball would be a small patch within one such bubble.

Now here's the thing - blow enough bubbles, and some of them will run into each other. In just the same way, if we reside within a bubble, it is guaranteed to encounter many others, and inter-bubble collisions just may impact our observiball.

Just as two spherical bubbles intersect in a disc, these collisions would leave disc-like bruises on our observiball forming faint warmer or cooler discs on the CMB.

While the number, intensity, and size of these discs depends on unknown details, specific enough signatures of such a collision have been worked out by several groups of cosmologists, especially Matthew Kleban of NYU and collaborators, that we can search for them.

A first study of this sort was carried out by a team led by Hiranya Peiris of University College London. They identified several candidate collisions in the CMB, but none were convincing detections.

The team is now analyzing data from the Planck mission to assess these candidates, and either confirm collisions or put stringent limits on their existence.

Detecting cosmic bubble collisions would require some luck even if eternal inflation is true - collisions must be frequent enough, strong enough, and not erased by inflation within our bubble.

Yet the potential payoff is enormous, evidence for a other universes would be an epochal expansion in our understanding.

And even if nothing is found, the very possibility reveals an amazing evolution of such enormous questions from rank speculation into the fold of solid scientific inquiry.

From the BBC:

'Tatooine-like' double-star systems can host planets

A new study shows that planetary systems can form and survive in the chaotic environment around pairs of stars.

A team reports in Science the discovery of two planets orbiting a pair of stars - a so-called binary.

Gravitational disturbances generated by stellar pairs are thought to be very severe for any orbiting planets.

Nasa's Kepler space telescope found two small planets around a pair of low-mass stars.

Such systems have particular significance for science fiction fans. In the Star Wars films, Luke Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine orbits a binary star.

The planetary system, known as Kepler-47, is located roughly 5,000 light-years away, in the constellation Cygnus.

It contains a pair of stars whizzing around each other every 7.5 days. One star is Sun-like, while the other is about one-third the size of its neighbour and 175 times fainter.

Circling the stars is an inner planet about three times larger in diameter than the Earth, and an outer planet that is just slightly larger than Uranus.

The inner planet - dubbed Kepler-47b - takes 49 days to complete an orbit, while the outer planet - Kepler-47c - takes 303 days.

The orbit of the outer planet places it in the so-called "habitable zone", the region around a star where it is neither too cold nor too hot for liquid water to persist on the surface of a planet.

While the outer world is probably a gas-giant planet and thus not suitable for life, its discovery establishes that these "circumbinary" planets can, and do, exist in habitable zones.

A handful of circumbinary planets have been discovered before, but this is the first known planetary system around a pair of stars.

It is thought that gravitational perturbations generated by the binary could either toss planets out of the system, into one of the stars, or fling them into devastating head-on collisions.

"Kepler-47 shows us that typical planetary architectures, with multiple planets in co-planar orbits, can form around two stars," said co-author Joshua Carter, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

"We've learned that circumbinary planets can be like the planets in our own Solar System, but with two suns."

Prof William Welsh, from San Diego State University, who presented the work at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) meeting in Beijing on behalf of the Kepler Science Team, said: "The thing I find most exciting... is the potential for habitability in a circumbinary system.

"Kepler-47c is not likely to harbour life, but if it had large moons, those would be very interesting worlds."

The Kepler space telescope discovered the planets by measuring the tell-tale drop in brightness they cause when they transit (eclipse) their host stars.

Spectroscopic data from telescopes at McDonald Observatory in Texas enabled the absolute sizes of the planets to be measured.

From the BBC:

Antarctic may host methane stores

Large volumes of methane - a potent greenhouse gas - could be locked beneath the ice-covered regions of Antarctica, according to a new study.

It says this methane could be released into the atmosphere as ice retreats, contributing to climate warming.

The findings indicate that ancient deposits of organic matter may have been converted to methane by microbes under the ice.

An international team reported the results in Nature journal.

Study leader Jemima Wadham, from Bristol University, said: "This is an immense amount of organic carbon, more than ten times the size of carbon stocks in northern permafrost regions.

"Our laboratory experiments tell us that these sub-ice environments are also biologically active, meaning that this organic carbon is probably being metabolised to carbon dioxide and methane gas by microbes."

They estimate that there could be hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon stored in methane reservoirs under the ice sheet.

The authors say that the predicted shallow depth of these methane reserves means that they could be destabilised by climate change, and might act as a positive feedback on global warming.

Co-author Dr Sandra Arndt, also from the University of Bristol, said: "It's not surprising that you might expect to find significant amounts of methane hydrate trapped beneath the ice sheet.

"Just like in sub-seafloor sediments, it is cold and pressures are high which are important conditions for methane hydrate formation."

In their Nature paper, the authors comment that their "findings suggest that the Antarctic Ice Sheet may be a neglected but important component of the global methane budget".

From the BBC:

Chocolate may protect the brain from stroke

Chocolate might not be the healthiest thing for your waistline - but research suggests it may protect against stroke.

A study following more than 37,000 Swedish men showed those eating the most chocolate were the least likely to have a stroke.

It follows on from other studies that have suggested eating chocolate can improve the health of the heart.

However, researchers and the Stroke Association warned the findings were not an excuse to overeat chocolate.

Everyone taking part in the study was asked about their eating habits and their health was monitored for a decade.

They were split into four groups based on the amount of chocolate, with the bottom group eating, on average, no chocolate each week and the top group having 63g (2.2oz) - slightly more than an average bar.

Comparing the top and bottom groups showed those eating the most chocolate were 17% less likely to have a stroke during the study, published in the journal Neurology.

Flavonoids

One of the researchers, Prof Susanna Larsson, from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, said: "The beneficial effect of chocolate consumption on stroke may be related to the flavonoids in chocolate.

"Flavonoids appear to be protective against cardiovascular disease through antioxidant, anti-clotting and anti-inflammatory properties.

"It's also possible that flavonoids in chocolate may decrease blood concentrations of bad cholesterol and reduce blood pressure."

The study also noted that while dark chocolate had been linked to benefits for the heart in the past, milk chocolate was the preferred option in Sweden and in the study.

Dr Clare Walton, from the Stroke Association, said: "Past research has shown that eating dark chocolate might go some way to reducing your stroke risk if it is eaten as part of a healthy, balanced diet.

"This study suggests that eating a moderate amount of other types of chocolate could also be beneficial in men.

"However, a lot more research is needed and these results should not be used as an excuse for men to eat chocolate as an alternative to regular exercise or eating a healthy diet to reduce their risk of stroke."

The authors of the study warned of the high sugar and fat content of chocolate.

"It should be consumed in moderation," they said.

From the BBC:

Gene therapy restores sense of smell in mice

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

Gene therapy has been used to give mice born without a sense of smell the ability to sniff their surroundings, an international team of researchers say.

The mice had a genetic disease which affected microscopic hairs in their body - called cilia - which can detect chemicals in the air.

Researchers hope their findings will lead to treatments for diseased cilia, which can cause blindness, deafness and kidney disease in people.

The study is in Nature Medicine.

Microscopic cilia stick out from many cells in the body. A range of genetic disorders called ciliopathies result in damaged cilia which can be fatal or severely debilitating. One symptom can be a lifetime without a sense of smell, called congenital anosmia.

Gene therapy

A groups of researchers, lead by the University of Michigan, looked at mice with a mutation in their Ift88 gene, which meant they struggled to produce cilia and could not smell.

The group created a virus which was capable of infecting cells with a working version of the Ift88 gene. This was injected into the nose on three consecutive days. This was able to restore the cilia and a sense of smell.

Prof Philip Beales from University College London was involved in the study. He told the BBC: "It is a proof of concept that has shown we can get that gene back into these cells, produce the right protein, produce cilia and function as expected.

He said the mice were then able to use their sense of smell to seek out food. However, it is hoped a similar approach could be used for other symptoms of the disorders.

Dr James Battey, director of the US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders which part funded the research said: "These results could lead to one of the first therapeutic options for treating people with congenital anosmia.

"They also set the stage for therapeutic approaches to treating diseases that involve cilia dysfunction in other organ systems, many of which can be fatal if left untreated."

From the BBC:

Organic food 'not any healthier'

Eating organic food will not make you healthier, according to researchers at Stanford University, although it could cut your exposure to pesticides.

They looked at more than 200 studies of the content and associated health gains of organic and non-organic foods.

Overall, there was no discernable difference between the nutritional content, although the organic food was 30% less likely to contain pesticides.

Critics say the work is inconclusive and call for more studies.

The research, published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, looked at 17 studies comparing people who ate organic with those who did not and 223 studies that compared the levels of nutrients, bacteria, fungus or pesticides in various foods - including fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, milk and eggs.

None of the human studies ran for longer than two years, making conclusions about long-term outcomes impossible. And all of the available evidence was relatively weak and highly variable - which the authors say is unsurprising because of all the different variables, like weather and soil type, involved.

Fruit and vegetables contained similar amounts of vitamins, and milk the same amount of protein and fat - although a few studies suggested organic milk contained more omega-3.

Organic foods did contain more nitrogen, but the researchers say this is probably due to differences in fertiliser use and ripeness at harvest and is unlikely to provide any health benefit.

Their findings support those of the UK's Food Standards Agency, which commissioned a review a few years ago into organic food claims.

Prof Alan Dangour, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who carried out that work, said: "Consumers select organic foods for a variety of reasons, however this latest review identifies that at present there are no convincing differences between organic and conventional foods in nutrient content or health benefits.

"Hopefully this evidence will be useful to consumers."

Dr Crystal Smith-Spangler, the lead author of the latest review, said there were many reasons why people chose to eat organic, including animal welfare or environmental concerns.

"Some believe that organic food is always healthier and more nutritious. We were a little surprised that we didn't find that.

"There isn't much difference between organic and conventional foods, if you're an adult and making a decision based solely on your health."

But the Soil Association said the study was flawed.

"Studies that treat crop trials as if they were clinical trials of medicines, like this one, exaggerate the variation between studies, and drown out the real differences.

"A UK review paper, using the correct statistical analysis, has found that most of the differences in nutrient levels between organic and non-organic fruit and vegetables seen in this US study are actually highly significant."

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "Evidence has not yet emerged that there are nutritional benefits from eating organically produced foods compared to conventionally produced foods. We will continue to review research on this subject."

From the BBC:

BitTorrent study finds most file-sharers are monitored

Anyone using file-sharing service BitTorrent to download the latest film or music release is likely to be monitored, UK-based researchers suggest.

A Birmingham University study indicates that an illegal file-sharer downloading popular content would be logged by a monitoring firm within three hours.

The team said it was "surprised" by the scale of the monitoring.

Copyright holders could use the data to crack down on illegal downloads.

The three-year research was carried out by a team of computer scientists who developed software that acted like a BitTorrent file-sharing client and logged all the connections made to it.

BitTorrent is a method of obtaining files by downloading from many users at the same time.

The logs revealed that monitoring did not distinguish between hardcore illegal downloaders and those new to it.

"You don't have to be a mass downloader. Someone who downloads a single movie will be logged as well," said Dr Tom Chothia, who led the research.

"If the content was in the top 100 it was monitored within hours," he said. "Someone will notice and it will be recorded."

Less popular content was also monitored although less frequently, the study indicated.

Marketing tool

The research identified about 10 different monitoring firms logging content. Of these, a handful were identifiable as copyright-enforcement organisations, security firms and even other research labs.

But about six of the biggest-scale monitors were harder to identify, as the companies behind them used third-party hosting firms to run the searches for them.

Why such firms wanted the massive amounts of data was unclear, said Dr Chothia.

"Many firms are simply sitting on the data. Such monitoring is easy to do and the data is out there so they think they may as well collect it as it may be valuable in future," he said.

Some firms alleged to be carrying out mass-scale monitoring have been accused of selling the data to copyright holders for marketing purposes.

"The data shows what content is popular and where," said Dr Chothia.

The study also revealed that so-called blocklists, used by some illegal file-sharers to prevent monitors from connecting to their computers, might not be much use.

"Many of the monitors we found weren't on the blocklists so these measures to bypass the monitors aren't really working," said Dr Chothia.

Hard evidence

Some copyright owners in Europe and the US are using IP addresses gathered by monitoring firms to apply for court orders obliging internet service providers to hand over the physical addresses associated with them.

They are then writing to individuals seeking recompense or warning of the possibility of court action.

But Dr Chothia doubts evidence gathered in this manner would stand up in court.

"All the monitors observed during the study would connect to file-sharers and verify that they were running the BitTorrent software, but they would not actually collect any of the files being shared," he said.

"It is questionable whether the monitors observed would actually have evidence of file-sharing that would stand up in court," he added.

Lawyers have previously cast doubt on whether evidence collected from an IP address can be used in court because such an address pinpoints the internet connection used for downloading rather than a specific individual.

From the BBC:

Fish oils 'help slow age decline'

By Jonathan Ball BBC News, Aberdeen

Moderate exercise, and a regular intake of oily fish fatty acids, keeps elderly immobility at bay, a study suggests.

Findings of a recent trial show that women aged over 65 who received omega-3 fatty acids gained almost twice as much muscle strength following exercise than those taking olive oil.

A larger trial is planned to confirm these findings and to determine why muscle condition improves.

The findings are being presented at the British Science Festival in Aberdeen.

Some studies have linked diets high in omega-3 - commonly found in oily fish such as mackerel and sardines - to potential health benefits, such as a lower risk of coronary heart disease.

During healthy ageing, muscle size is reduced by 0.5-2% per year.

This process - known as sarcopenia - can result in frailty and immobility in old people.

Little is known about the prevalence of sarcopenia in the UK, but data from the US shows that 25% of people aged 50-70 have sarcopenia and this increases to more than half of those aged over 80 years.

According to Dr Stuart Gray from the University of Aberdeen, the cost of sarcopenia is immense; either in direct nursing and care costs or in hospital admissions through falls.

"Around one-and-a-half percent of the total US healthcare budget is spent on sarcopenia-related issues", he said.

Tales from the farmyard

The rate of muscle loss is dictated to some extent by lifestyle - consumption of a low protein diet and a sedentary lifestyle are known to exacerbate muscle loss.

Previous studies demonstrated that livestock fed on omega 3-rich diets had increased muscle bulk.

This prompted Dr Gray to investigate whether these fatty acids could help reverse sarcopenia in the elderly.

In his initial studies, he showed by MRI imaging that middle-aged rats taking fish oil supplement had a lower loss of lean mass than counterparts fed a normal diet.

"The fish oil seemed to be having anabolic [muscle-building] protective effects in the rats, but rats aren't humans, so the next step was to try it in humans," he said.

So, Dr Gray recruited 14 women aged over 65 years and asked both groups to undergo a 12 week exercise programme consisting of two 30-minute sessions of standard leg muscle exercises.

Half the women were given the omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA, whist the other half received an olive oil placebo (negative control).

At the start and end of the trial, the women's leg muscle strength was measured.

The results were compelling. Women receiving olive oil increased their muscle mass by 11% whilst those receiving EPA and DHA showed a 20% increase - a statistically significant improvement.

But as Dr Gray was quick to point out, not all fish oil supplements contain beneficial amounts of these fatty acids. He told BBC News:

"One of the problems with a lot of these supplements is that the amount of EPA varies.

"A capsule containing one gram of fish oil might only contain 100 milligrams (mg) of EPA and some might contain 400".

His advice for anyone wanting to improve their intake of dietary EPA and DHA was to take a supplement that contained the highest levels of these two fatty acids.

Alternatively, half of the average portion of oily fish contains equivalent amounts of beneficial EPA and DHA as those used in the trial.

Sex difference

The researchers have now received funding to carry out a larger trial that includes 60 people aged over 65 years to confirm the beneficial effects of the fatty acids. The new trial will recruit similar numbers of men and women.

Previous research has shown that men and women differ in their ability to synthesise new protein and also in their response to exercise.

"Older women have similar levels of protein synthesis to younger women whereas older men have lower levels compared to younger men."

"Older men adapt to exercise and increase their protein synthesis. Older women don't do this to a great extent, although their basal levels of synthesis are higher," Dr Gray explained.

Assessing whether women and men respond differently to exercise and fatty acid supplements will be one of the questions that the new trial will address.

The trial is scheduled to start in the next month and will recruit people from the Aberdeenshire area.

From the BBC:

Can electricity from the human body replace batteries?

By Anne-Marie Bullock Producer, Costing the Earth

Harnessing energy from the human body may only generate small amounts of electricity but scientists believe it has a wide range of potentially life-changing applications.

Imagine clothes made with materials capable of generating electricity from either the warmth or movement of the human body.

That is what Professor Steve Beeby has been developing in his laboratory at the University of Southampton.

A vest made of this material could potentially power medical sensors on the wearer's body to carry out periodic checks for high blood pressure or other symptons. The results could be transmitted wirelessly back to a GP or hospital.

There is potential to reduce regular hospital check-ups with benefits to both patients and a cash-strapped NHS, believes Prof Beeby.

"The idea with energy harvesting normally is you collect energy as you go along and when you have enough, you use it. The electronics go back to sleep and you carry on collecting more energy for the next time."

But making the clothing truly responsive to body movement is the challenge for scientists.

"Clothing is designed to be compliant and not resist your motion and to get electrical energy out you're going to have to do some work," says Professor Beeby.

"It may be best to put this somewhere like your shoe or sock, where there are naturally forces as you walk around."

Power of the heart-beat

Another way of generating electricity is from human blood flow or the movement of internal organs.

For instance the heart's movement has been harnessed to power a pacemaker developed by cardiologist Dr Paul Roberts at University Hospital Southampton.

"Occasionally we'll actually put our hands on the heart and it's astounding how forceful each beat is. You couldn't hold it hard enough to stop it from squeezing - and that's at rest.

"If someone had to get up and run they're able to increase that strength even more, so clearly there's a huge reserve in what the heart is able to deliver," he says.

The pacemaker lead is placed through the heart and a balloon is put in two of the heart's chambers so as each contracts it squeezes the balloon, forcing a magnet down the lead, through a coil to produce an electric charge.

So far Dr Roberts and his team have been able to produce 17% of the power needed for a pacemaker.

Pacemaker batteries have to be replaced every seven years or so via surgery.

Creating an everlasting pacemaker powered entirely by the charge from the owner's own heartbeats, would take out the risk associated with heart surgery as well as saving on costs.

Dr Roberts is well aware of the apparent contradiction of people with heart complaints using heart power to run pacemakers.

"The amount of energy we are potentially taking away from the heart's energy is less than 1% so even in someone with very significant heart failure the percentage is so small we don't think it would any appreciable effect on their overall functions."

Soldier power

At Cranfield University, scientists are working on developing knee brackets to allow soldiers to generate power as they march or run that could eventually replace battery packs.

"I'd like to put the device in a soldier's boot and use that energy. They carry a lot of batteries around with them so there's a massive incentive to reduce the load they carry," says Alice Daniels of Cranfield University.

Scientists are also using piezoelectric devices to potentially generate power from the bounce of a rucksack on a soldier's back as they run.

"The idea behind energy harvesting is you can have an autonomous system so you don't have to pay to change all the batteries," says Daniels.

"Initially the cost of energy harvesting will be higher, but in the long run the payback period will work out."

Capturing real time information released by humans - such as body temperature - offers the potential to save on the amounts of energy consumed nationwide in institutions like workplaces or schools.

"Buildings use enormous amounts of power for lighting, heating and air conditioning but in a pretty coarse and stupid way that doesn't take much account of people's activity," says Professor Eric Yeatman of Imperial College.

"But if everybody was wearing sensors that were monitoring their activity, and if that was being transmitted into the environment, you could imagine a situation where your home or office could be constantly adapting itself in a predictive way to what you're asking of it.

Professor Yeatman believes such technology could cut down on waste enormously and aid the reduction of global power consumption.

"The great thing is this needs only microwatts of power from your body to save megawatts in the system."

From the BBC:

Scotland's games industry adds 'no value' suggests study

A government report has claimed that the Scottish computer games industry adds nothing to the country's economy.

The Economic Contribution Study for Scotland's Creative industries, using data from 2010, said the sector brought a Gross Value Added (GVA) of £0.

TIGA, which represents the UK games industry, has criticised the report which was commissioned by Creative Scotland and Scottish Enterprise.

Both bodies admitted the findings differed from previous studies.

GVA is an economic measure of the total income of a given sector or business.

According to the study, which was complied by DC Research using data from 2010, computer games were the least valuable of the 16 creative sectors evaluated and were placed behind cultural education and the visual arts.

It also claimed the industry only employed an estimated 200 people.

Valuable contribution

Dr Richard Wilson, TIGA's chief executive officer (CEO) said: "While the data in the Creative Scotland report was compiled across all of Scotland's Arts and Creative Industries and the anomalous information explained by the absorption of companies into other categories in the survey, TIGA believes the results do not reflect the true value of the games industry in Scotland."

Creative Scotland said it acknowledged the limitations of the official data available for the Economic Contribution Study and had noted in the report that some of the findings did not compare to similar research into the computer games industry.

A spokesman said: "The official statistics on which the report is based are beyond the control of Creative Scotland.

"Their limitations were acknowledged at the time of publication and figures from the games industry's trade body were highlighted.

"The report remains a valuable contribution to assessing the contribution of the arts and creative industries in Scotland - with the caveats that were highlighted at the time of publication."

Creative Scotland suggested that a proportion of firms involved in computer games may have been classified as part of the Software and Electronic Publishing sector and as such their economic contribution attributed to that industry.

The report does suggest that Scotland's software and electronic publishing sector contributed hugely to the country's economy over the same period, employing just over 19,000 people and contributing just under a £1bn.

Successsful industry

Dr Wilson said TIGA's own research had shown the sector was much more buoyant.

TIGA's figures showed there were 668 permanent staff in 50 games development, publishing and service companies in the Scottish games industry, which represents almost 10% of the total industry in the UK.

The body also estimated annual economic contribution of Scotland's computer games developers was about £30m to HM Treasury.

Dr Wilson added: "Fortunately, the Scottish government, many MSPs in the Scottish Parliament and MPs in the Westminster Parliament do recognise the significance and the great potential of the video games sector.

"TIGA will continue to work with the government, MSPs, MPs, Creative Scotland and Scottish Enterprise to highlight the importance of the industry."

Brian Baglow, editor-in-chief of Scottishgames.net, described the report's findings as alarming and said: "The problem is that this is an official report created by two Scottish government organisations which oversee the cultural and enterprise elements of the Scottish economy.

"Moving forward policy decisions, funding allocations etc. will all be made based on the information in this document.

"If 'computer games' is seen as small, insignificant and of little economic value then the sector will treated as such."

Digital industries

A large number of Scotland's game developers are based in Dundee.

Will Dawson, convener of Dundee City Council's city development committee said: "According to the most recent statistics that we have access to, there were 3,379 full time equivalent jobs in the digital industries in Tayside. The companies employing these people turned over almost £185m.

"While I accept that these figures are slightly out of date, the digital industries are an important part of the Dundee and Tayside economy, and we recognise that the nature of the sector is changing from large-scale companies employing hundreds of people to smaller scale niche firms employing less than ten, it is still providing exciting opportunities."

Linda McPherson, director of Creative Industries at Scottish Enterprise, agreed that the report had probably misrepresented the games industry: "The report's objective was to look at the wider creative industries in Scotland for the first time.

"As the sector covers so many disciplines, we know that the report has some limitations, particularly for video games."

She said that bodies like TIGA had provided useful information on the industry in the past and Scottish Enterprise intended to work with them to improve their reporting.

She added: "We will provide, in partnership with industry and these organisations, a more current and comprehensive survey of the games sector later this year, as part of the industry's Digital Inspirations strategy."

From the BBC:

UK to fight energy product ruling

By Roger Harrabin Environment analyst

The government is to fight an EU ruling that the UK must raise VAT on energy efficiency products from 5% to 20%.

VAT was reduced to 5% on energy efficiency products in the UK because government wants to tackle fuel poverty, reduce carbon emissions and create jobs.

The reduction followed a long fight by green groups.

They argued that it was nonsensical to tax energy saving more than energy use, which incurs tax of just 5%.

But the European Commission says the reduction on energy saving products breaches the VAT directive.

The directive allows for reduced VAT in several areas including water, food, audio books, restaurant service, gardening, nappies and energy itself - but not energy-saving products.

That is even though the commission's energy policy is to improve efficiency and cut carbon emissions.

The government says the VAT ruling is irrational and has confirmed that it will see the Commission in court, probably early next year.

The Climate Change Minister Greg Barker has started a Twitter campaign on the issue.

He told BBC News: "The Coalition's approach to energy efficiency is good for the environment and good for growth. Rather than obstruct us Europe should follow our example!"

It's part of a long-running tussle over VAT and energy between the Uk and Commission. Gordon Brown personally intervened on the issue.

But green groups are suspicious that the government may be trying to pick a populist fight with Brussels.

Keith Allott from WWF told BBC News: "On this issue the government is clearly in the right. There are many barriers to energy efficiency so reducing the tax is a no-brainer.

"But it's ironic in the context that the UK government has been stone-walling on key provisions in the energy efficiency directive."

WWF accuse the government of failing to support EU mandatory targets for energy efficiency and of watering down targets for renovating public buildings. The government insists that it played a positive role in negotiations.

From the BBC:

Mammoth find in eastern Siberia raises 'clone hope'

The discovery of well-preserved woolly mammoth remains in eastern Siberia has raised distant hopes that the animal could be cloned.

A Russian-led team of international scientists found intact cells among remains including hair and bone marrow.

In theory, the animal - which died out between 10,000 and 4,000 years ago - could be recreated if living cells are discovered among the remains.

But one of the team members told Reuters news agency that was unlikely.

The remains were discovered in August, metres underground in the permafrost of the vast north-eastern Siberian province of Yakutia, reports said.

Stable temperature

"All we need for cloning is one living cell, which means it can reproduce autonomously. Then it will be no problem for us to multiply them to tens of thousands cells," Semyon Grigoryev, a professor at North-East Federal University (NEFU), told Reuters.

Laboratory research is now said to be under way to determine whether there are living cells among the remains.

But Mr Grigoryev admitted the chances were slim.

"We are counting on our region's permafrost to have kept some cells alive. But it is unlikely," said Grigoryev, explaining that the remains would need to have been kept at a stable temperature between -4C and -20C (25F and -4F) for cells to remain alive.

Scientists have attempted to clone mammoth remains several times, but without success. Not all believe it would be possible to do so.

Most mammoths are believed to have died out about 10,000 years ago, but small groups were thought to have lived on for several thousand years in Alaska and the Russian Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean.

From the BBC:

Malware inserted on PC production lines, says study

Cybercriminals have opened a new front in their battle to infect computers with malware - PC production lines.

Several new computers have been found carrying malware installed in the factory, suggests a Microsoft study.

One virus called Nitol found by Microsoft steals personal details to help criminals plunder online bank accounts.

Microsoft won permission from a US court to tackle the network of hijacked PCs made from Nitol-infected computers.

Domain game

In a report detailing its work to disrupt the Nitol botnet, Microsoft said the criminals behind the malicious program had exploited insecure supply chains to get viruses installed as PCs were being built.

The viruses were discovered when Microsoft digital crime investigators bought 20 PCs, 10 desktops and 10 laptops from different cities in China.

Four of the computers were infected with malicious programs even though they were fresh from the factory.

Microsoft set up and ran Operation b70 to investigate and found that the four viruses were included in counterfeit software some Chinese PC makers were installing on computers.

Nitol was the most pernicious of the viruses Microsoft caught because, as soon as the computer was turned on, it tried to contact the command and control system set up by Nitol's makers to steal data from infected machines.

Further investigation revealed that the botnet behind Nitol was being run from a web domain that had been involved in cybercrime since 2008. Also on that domain were 70,000 separate sub-domains used by 500 separate strains of malware to fool victims or steal data.

"We found malware capable of remotely turning on an infected computer's microphone and video camera, potentially giving a cybercriminal eyes and ears into a victim's home or business," said Richard Boscovich, a lawyer in Microsoft's digital crimes unit in a blogpost.

A US court has now given Microsoft permission to seize control of the web domain, 3322.org, which it claims is involved with the Nitol infections. This will allow it to filter out legitimate data and block traffic stolen by the viruses.

Peng Yong, the Chinese owner of the 3322.org domain, told the AP news agency that he knew nothing about Microsoft's legal action and said his company had a "zero tolerance" attitude towards illegal activity on the domain.

"Our policy unequivocally opposes the use of any of our domain names for malicious purposes," Peng told AP.

However, he added, the sheer number of users it had to police meant it could not be sure that all activity was legitimate.

"We currently have 2.85 million domain names and cannot exclude that individual users might be using domain names for malicious purposes," he said.

From the BBC:

Europe hits old internet address limits

By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

Europe has almost exhausted its stock of old-style internet addresses.

Strict rationing of these addresses - called IPv4 - has been started by the body that hands them out in Europe.

From now on, companies can only make one more application for IPv4 addresses and, if successful, will only get 1,024 of them.

In addition, any application for more old addresses must demonstrate how an organisation is using the new, replacement, addressing scheme.

"The day has come, finally," said Axel Pawlik, managing director of the Ripe NCC that hands out addresses to European ISPs, firms and other organisations.

Every device that goes online is allocated a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address.

The internet grew up using an addressing scheme called IP Version 4 (IPv4). In the 1970s when the web was being built the 4.3 billion IP addresses allowed by IPv4 were thought to be enough.

However, the rapid growth of the internet and popularity of the web have swiftly exhausted this pool.

The growth of the net is linked to the size of the pool because everything that connects to the net needs an IP address to send and receive data.

Restrictions

Plans are afoot to move to a new scheme, known as IP Version 6 (IPv6), that has an effectively inexhaustible supply of addresses.

On 14 September Ripe NCC got down to its last 16 million IPv4 addresses. While this might sound a lot, said Mr Pawlik, the use of this last substantial block would be so heavily restricted that the supply could be considered to be at an end.

"Applicants will only get about 1,000 addresses," said Mr Pawlik, "and that's it and they only get them once and that's the end of it."

To even get that small number of IPv4 addresses, he said, applicants must already have an allocation of IPv6 addresses and demonstrate how they planned to use them.

Immediately prior to reaching the last big block Ripe was handing out just under four million IPv4 addresses every 10 days.

Anyone planning expansion based around the net should already be committed to using IPv6, said Mr Pawlik.

Other techniques based around technical tricks that share IPv4 addresses among many different devices would prove increasingly unworkable, he said.

"They are complicated, potentially unstable and expensive," he said. "The other route they could go is to v6 as it's in most of the net equipment now."

From the BBC:

Laser injection less painful than needles

A laser device for less painful injections has been developed by South Korean scientists.

The system could replace traditional needles, with a jab as painless as being hit with a puff of air.

The laser is already used in aesthetic skin treatments. The aim now is to make low-cost injectors for clinical use.

A team from Seoul National University in South Korea describe the process in the Optical Society's journal Optics Letters.

The researchers write that the laser, called erbium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet, or Er:YAG, propels a stream of medicine with the right force to almost painlessly enter the skin.

The jet is slightly larger than the width of a human hair and can reach the speed of 30m (100ft) per second.

"The impacting jet pressure is higher than the skin tensile strength and thus causes the jet to smoothly penetrate into the targeted depth underneath the skin, without any splashback of the drug," said Prof Jack Yoh of Seoul National University, who led the study.

Piston-like injectors are already in use, but jet strength and drug dose are more difficult to control.

"The laser-driven microjet injector can precisely control dose and the depth of drug penetration underneath the skin," said Prof Yoh.

The scientists have tested the laser on guinea pigs, injecting the drug up to several millimetres beneath the skin without any damage to the tissue, and are starting work on injectors for clinical use.

On the BBC news today:

Painkillers 'are the cause' of millions of headaches

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

Up to a million people in the UK have "completely preventable" severe headaches caused by taking too many painkillers, doctors have said.

They said some were trapped in a "vicious cycle" of taking pain relief, which then caused even more headaches.

The warning came as part of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence's (NICE) first guidelines for treating headaches.

It is also recommending acupuncture in some circumstances.

"Medication overuse headaches" feel the same as other common headaches or migraines.

There is no definitive UK data on the incidence of the condition, but studies in other countries suggest 1-2% of people are affected, while the World Health Organization says figures closer to 5% have been reported.

While painkillers would be many people's instant response, they could be making sufferers feel even worse.

Prof Martin Underwood, from Warwick Medical School, who led the NICE panel, said: "This can end up getting into a vicious cycle where your headache gets worse, so you take more painkillers, so your headache gets worse and this just becomes worse and worse and worse.

"It is such an easy thing to prevent."

'Tipping point'

Exactly how painkillers have this effect on the brain is unknown.

Most of the people affected are thought to have started with either everyday, tension-type headaches or migraines. The headaches then became worse as they treated themselves at home.

Manjit Matharu, a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, said there was a tipping point at 10 to 15 days of using pain relief each month when the drugs became the issue.

He said: "This is a huge problem in the population. The figures in terms of the number of people who have medication overuse headache are one in 50, so that is approximately a million people who have headaches on a daily or near daily basis because they're using painkillers."

People with a family history of tension-type headaches or migraine may also be genetically more vulnerable to medication overuse headaches. They could be susceptible when taking pain relief even if it is not for headaches.

The new guidelines for doctors in England and Wales advise telling sufferers to immediately stop taking all pain relief. However, this will lead to about a month of agony as patients contend with regular headaches without pain relief, until symptoms eventually improve.

The panel said other options for controlling any underlying headaches, such as preventative treatments, could be considered.

Acupuncture

The guidelines also include a recommendation for acupuncture in patients susceptible to migraine and tension headaches.

"We would expect that to lead to more people getting acupuncture, but given there is good evidence to show this is effective for the prevention of both tension-type and migraine-type headaches then that is a good thing because people are getting access to an effective treatment," Prof Martin Underwood said.

Doctors have also been asked not to refer patients for brain scans "solely for reassurance" that they do not have a brain tumour. The NICE panel said a tumour would come with other symptoms such as a change in behaviour or epilepsy.

The chief executive of the Migraine Trust, Wendy Thomas, said: "The guideline will assist with accurate diagnosis, appropriate referral and evidence-based information for those with troublesome and disabling headaches.

"It will also raise awareness of medication overuse, which can be an issue for those with severe headaches.

"People with disabling migraine will experience improved quality of life as a result of this guideline."

Dr Fayyaz Ahmed, the chair of British Association for the Study of Headache, welcomed the guidelines.

He said: "Headache is the most prevalent condition and one in seven of the UK population has migraine.

"The condition puts an enormous burden on the healthcare resources and the economy in general."

From the BBC:

'Popcorn lung': Wayne Watson wins $7.2m in US court

A US man has been awarded $7.2m (£4.4m) in damages after claiming he developed "popcorn lung" from inhaling the artificial butter in microwave popcorn.

A Colorado jury agreed with Wayne Watson that a popcorn manufacturer should have had warning labels that the bag's fumes were dangerous to inhale.

Defence lawyers argued that Mr Watson's problems stemmed from years of working with carpet-cleaning chemicals.

He developed respiratory problems in 2007, after regularly eating popcorn.

"Popcorn lung" is a form of irreversible obstructive lung disease that scars the lung and makes it difficult for air to flow out.

The verdict is the latest in a series of successful cases, including by popcorn plant workers who became ill. The cases link diacetyl, an ingredient in the flavouring, to health problems.

Jurors found Gilster-Mary Lee Corp, a private-labelling manufacturer of popcorn, liable for 80% of the damages. Supermarket company Kroger Co was held liable for the other 20%.

Mr Watson had previously settled with flavourings company FONA International Inc.

"[The popcorn manufacturer] did absolutely no testing whatsoever to think the consumer might be at risk," Mr Watson told CBS News.

Mr Watson's case was helped by the testimony of Dr Cecile Rose, the doctor who diagnosed him with the condition.

She had been a consultant to the flavourings industry and had seen the same disease Mr Watson had developed among workers exposed to the chemical, Reuters reports.

From the BBC:

Ig Nobel honours ponytail physics

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

A UK/US team that came up with an equation to predict the shape of a ponytail has earned itself an Ig Nobel.

Patrick Warren, Raymond Goldstein, Robin Ball and Joe Keller picked up their prestigious award at a sellout gala ceremony at Harvard University.

Igs are intended as a bit of a spoof on the more sober Nobel science prizes.

Other 2012 winners included teams that studied how chimps could recognise each other from their behinds and why coffee will spill out of a moving mug.

But although some of this celebrated research might sound daft, much of it is intended to tackle real-world problems and gets published in peer-reviewed, scholarly journals.

Dr Warren, who is a researcher for Unilever in the UK, said he was thrilled to pick up his Ig.

"I'm amazed that a piece of work I've done has attracted so much attention," he told BBC News.

"My field, statistical physics, is not something that many will have heard of, so I'm really pleased we've done something that's caught the imagination."

His and his co-workers' research produced what has become known as the "Ponytail Shape Equation".

It takes into account the stiffness of the hair fibres on the head, the effects of gravity and the presence of the random curliness or waviness that is ubiquitous in human hair to model how a ponytail is likely to behave.

Together with a new quantity the team calls the Rapunzel Number, the equation can be used to predict the shape that hair will take when it is drawn behind the head and tied together.

"I've been working on this for a long time," said Dr Warren. "At Unilever, as you can imagine, there is a lot of interest because we sell a lot of haircare products. But there are wider applications where you have a lot of fibres coming together, such as in fabrics.

"I've also wondered if we can contribute something to the whole area of computer animation. Hair, for example, is something that is very hard to make look natural in animated movies."

Thursday's Ig Nobel ceremony at Harvard's Sanders Theatre was the 22nd since the American science humour magazine, Annals of Improbable Research, started the event.

The gala is always attended by real Nobel Laureates, who are tasked with handing out the prizes. Recipients get 60 seconds to make an acceptance speech. If they run over, a young girl will start to shout "boring". Another tradition is for everyone in the theatre to throw paper planes.

The full list of 2012 Ig Nobel winners:

Psychology Prize: Anita Eerland and Rolf Zwaan (Netherlands) and Tulio Guadalupe (Peru/Russia/Netherlands) for their study Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller.

Peace Prize: The SKN Company (Russia) for converting old Russian ammunition into new diamonds.

Acoustics Prize: Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada (Japan) for creating the SpeechJammer - a machine that disrupts a person's speech by making them hear their own spoken words at a very slight delay.

Neuroscience Prize: Craig Bennett, Abigail Baird, Michael Miller, and George Wolford (US) for demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere - even in a dead salmon.

Chemistry Prize: Johan Pettersson (Sweden/Rwanada) for solving the puzzle of why, in certain houses in the town of Anderslöv, Sweden, people's hair turned green.

Literature Prize: The US Government General Accountability Office for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports.

Physics Prize: Joseph Keller (US), Raymond Goldstein (US/UK), Patrick Warren and Robin Ball (UK) for calculating the balance of forces that shape and move the hair in a human ponytail. Prof Keller was additionally given an Ig for work he contributed to on non-drip teapots in 1999 but for which he had been wrongly overlooked at the time.

Fluid Dynamics Prize: Rouslan Krechetnikov (US/Russia/Canada) and Hans Mayer (US) for studying the dynamics of liquid-sloshing, to learn what happens when a person walks while carrying a cup of coffee.

Anatomy Prize: Frans de Waal (Netherlands/US) and Jennifer Pokorny (US) for discovering that chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends.

Medicine Prize: Emmanuel Ben-Soussan and Michel Antonietti (France) for advising doctors who perform colonoscopies how to minimise the chance that their patients will explode.

Classic!

Thanks for sharing Loro 

From the BBC:

Women of Wikipedia edit planned

The Wikipedia profiles of women in technology and engineering will be updated at an "edit-a-thon" held at the Royal Society next month.

The profiles chosen to be updated will all be of historical figures.

Those unable to attend the session in London on 19 October will be able to take part online.

The event has been organised as part of annual celebrations to celebrate the work of Ada Lovelace.

She worked with mathematical engineer Charles Babbage on his "analytical machine" in the early 19th Century.

The machine, which was designed but never actually built, is considered to be the foundation for modern computers.

Among the profiles being considered for the edit-a-thon are Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, a crystallographer who discovered the chemical structure of oil component benzene, and Dr Elsie Widdowson who oversaw the introduction of vitamin supplements to food during World War II rationing.

Another candidate, Mary Buckland, is mentioned only in her husband William's Wikipedia entry although the pair worked together as palaeontologists finding, recording and identifying fossils in the 1800s.

Leading ladies

Uta Frith, professor in cognitive development at UCL and a fellow of the Royal Society, will be leading a panel discussion after the edit-a-thon.

"The Wikipedia idea struck a real chord in me because I read about a year ago that the typical person who writes entries for Wikipedia is a man. That really started alarm bells ringing because we don't think about it - who is doing all this work?" she said.

Prof Frith is concerned about the visibility of women in the fields of science and technology.

"Can you immediately come up with a handful of names of female staff in technology? Is that because there aren't any or because they're sort of invisible?" she said.

"It's a catch-22 - if you can't find them easily in a place like Wikipedia, you won't know anything about them. You'll think they are not important."

Prof Frith told the BBC she intended to personally create a profile for Mary Buckland at the event.

"She did the most exquisite anatomical drawings of fossils, we have some of them at the Royal Society," she said.

"I hope this event will be the start of many more, where we can also improve the visibility of living female scientists."

From the BBC:

David Shukman Science editor

The 'big melt' at the roof of the world

Dig into the history of polar exploration and you might wonder what all the fuss is about with this month's news of a record sea-ice melt in the Arctic.

In 1893, the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen ventured through the "titanic forces" of the ice, amid the "howlings and thunderings" of the floes splitting around his ship, the Fram, but then found himself in a stretch of open water.

The same had happened the day before. And this was within striking distance of the North Pole - Nansen eventually reached 86 degrees North, further than anyone at the time. And no one back then had even thought of global warming.

The break in the ice surrounding Nansen's ship was not just some narrow channel. It "stretched far away towards the northern horizon". Naturally, he wanted to head that way.

Faced with the same scene now, the pressing question for us would be whether that open water might stretch all the way to the roof of the world.

But Nansen had a different question in mind. "Could it be land?" he wondered. Even then, a little over a century ago, it was still conceivable that some mythical polar continent was waiting to be discovered. Instead, there was no land; only more ice.

It's easy to forget how recently the Arctic has been explored and how recently scientists have tried to comprehend it.

The Pole was only reached in 1926 when that other Norwegian hero, Roald Amundsen, flew an airship there from the outpost of Ny Alesund on Svalbard, which I visited earlier this month.

An earlier claim by the American explorer Robert Peary is widely discounted.

Big annual variations

The reality of the Arctic is that the ice is not consistent. Nansen noticed it heaving with the tides. Atlases convey a solid sheet of unbroken white but this frozen ocean is constantly shifting, breaking apart, reforming, its condition varying massively year by year.

And the total dark of the polar winter guarantees that much of the sea will freeze whatever happens. That is sometimes forgotten in all the talk of a record melt. The question is the fate of the ice in summertime: how rapidly it melts and how extensively.

Gaps in the ice are not significant, nor are very short bursts of melting. They did not help the generations of explorers who for several centuries tried and failed to sail through the Northwest Passage, a sea route linking the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Canadian arctic.

Even in 2007, when the previous record for melting was set, and satellite pictures showed the passage to be entirely clear of ice, there was only a short period of open water.

When I sailed through the passage on a Canadian icebreaker, the Amundsen, in October that year, we encountered huge floes of thick ice.

The warming had indeed achieved massive melting. But it had also dislodged vast chunks of ice from around the Pole and they had drifted south into our path. The clanging of metal on ice resounded through the hull. The Arctic is not straightforward.

What matters is the overall pattern of freezing and melting, and how that is changing.

In southern Greenland, back in July 2004, a local man - Ferdinand Egede - dug into the soft earth of a field to show me something he'd never expected to see in his lifetime: potatoes.

They were creamy-white and unblemished, the fruit of a warming Arctic. Now the newspapers say Greenlanders are even growing strawberries.

In Alaska, in September 2008, the US Coast Guard had just started operations in the Arctic and we joined a C-130 patrol flight to Barrow.

On board, a rather macho admiral bellowed over the intercom that he didn't care about global warming - but his job was to keep watch over the waters around the US and there was now a lot of water where there used to be ice.

Scientists stunned

None of this means the ice will vanish overnight. Earlier this month, at Ny Alesund, I went aboard the Norwegian Polar Institute's research vessel, the Lance.

It had been investigating the area between Svalbard and Greenland, known as the Fram Strait, named after Nansen's ship. The strait is the exit route from the Arctic Ocean, a current carrying the floes south into the Atlantic. The scientists were stunned by the overall melt across the region but much of their time had been spent surrounded by ice.

So is it scaremongering to report on this new record? Several people have suggested I should mention how the sea ice around Antarctica has expanded this year. It has, but Antarctica is a continent isolated by an ocean with its own unique and incredibly cold weather.

The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land where even small rises in temperature can cross the threshold between freezing and thawing so it's far more responsive to change.

Others say I'm underplaying the risks, that the record set this summer is tantamount to a planetary meltdown, an emergency.

I think we should be guided by the hard facts of observation. We know very reliably that the extent of melting has increased massively not just this year but also that it is part of a trend of decline in the sea ice over the past three decades.

This year's melt has left the Arctic with half the ice it has had on average in Septembers of the past 30 years. By a rough reckoning, that difference amounts to a dozen United Kingdoms.

We also know there is good evidence that the remaining ice is getting thinner and therefore weaker. But we do not know when the day will come when a ship might sail across the top of the world without bumping into any ice at all. We are heading that way, and faster than expected; a profoundly important prospect - but we cannot be sure if it will be as soon as this decade or later.

Nansen wrote of "moonlit vapour rising from open water". Satellite pictures could show him the vast tracts of ocean where the floes have disappeared. There was too much ice for him to reach the Pole. He'd have a far better chance now.