And a space story from the BBC:

Surrey Satellite unveils high-resolution space project

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News, Prague

A £100m project has been announced to launch three new British spacecraft to image the surface of the Earth.

The satellites, to be orbited in 2013, will be able to see details down to one metre at their best resolution.

It is a commercial venture between the spacecraft manufacturer Surrey Satellite Technology Limited and its data processing subsidiary, DMCii.

Nations that would not necessarily need their own dedicated satellites will be able to buy time on the spacecraft.

"This constellation of three satellites will be owned and operated from the UK but the capacity on the spacecraft will be leased to different international customers," explained Sir Martin Sweeting, executive chairman of SSTL.

The Guildford-based entrepreneur made the announcement in the Czech capital, Prague, which is hosting this year's International Astronautical Congress.

SSTL and DMCii already operate a fleet of 100kg-class imaging satellites, but these are owned by different nations, including the UK, China, Spain and Nigeria.

DMCii acts as their business manager, processing and distributing their data, and collecting any revenues earned from selling the satellites' pictures to third-party customers.

There is a burgeoning worldwide business in imaging the surface of the planet for all sorts of applications, from making street plans to policing deforestation.

Surrey Satellite has become a world leader in manufacturing small spacecraft for this purpose, lowering costs by making the most of off-the-shelf components developed for ordinary consumer electronics, such as laptops.

SSTL is a spin-out from the University of Surrey. It says its profitable business owes a great deal to government seed-funding 10 years ago that enabled it to test key technologies and market opportunities.

Sir Martin said there had been a 20-to-one return on this investment.

"We're not asking government to fund grand space programmes," he told BBC News. "But there are some technologies and some business cases that we need the help of government just to get us over the hump - to get the wheels turning."

The new spacecraft will be built to a tight timeline, which should see them ready for launch on a single rocket by the end of 2013.

Each satellite will be in a larger class than the current DMCii-managed fleet, topping over 300kg.

As well as their high resolution cameras (1m/pixel resolution panchromatic; 4m/pixel resolution colour), they will also accommodate imagers capable of mapping ultra-wide strips (600km) of the Earth's surface, albeit at resolutions above 20m.

This broad-swath facility will allow DMCii to continue to use the new satellites for disaster response. Its current fleet plays a leading role in acquiring the urgent maps needed by relief agencies when a natural or man-made calamity strikes a particular corner of the world.

The satellites have been particularly active this year in monitoring the impacts of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

A new page, and a story about that Icelandic volcanic eruptionL

Iceland's volcanic eruption yields ash clues

By Neil Bowdler Science reporter, BBC News

Samples collected using double-sided sticky tape could give fresh insight into the Eyjafjallajoekull eruption.

The samples could reveal how fine ash thrown up into the atmosphere by the Icelandic eruption fell to ground as clumps or "aggregates" of ash.

The British Geological Survey work will be used to create better models of how volcanic ash disperses after eruptions.

The eruption of the volcano in March this year caused chaos, shutting down huge swathes of European air space.

Long fingers

Dr Susan Loughlin, head of volcanology at the British Geological Survey, said the samples of ash retrieved from UK soil in the aftermath of the eruption came in a vast array of shapes and sizes.

"They're really quite beautiful. Some of the aggregates are dendritic, so they're really angular and have long fingers of... material.

"Others are quite round, quite blocky, quite densely packed," she told BBC News.

"And then we've also got really tiny crystals, which are very very beautiful under a microscopic view but extremely tiny."

Some of the individual grains of ash retrieved are less than one micron (a millionth of a metre) in diameter, while some of the clumps of ash are as large as 200 microns, about twice the width of a human hair.

The samples were collected on double-sided sticky tape as this method best preserves the structure of the fallen ash.

Fine analysis

The UK samples will be compared with those recovered in Iceland to build up a picture of how ash from the plume formed into these aggregates and fell to ground.

In Iceland itself, the process is thought to have been aided by electricity and water from the volcano's ice cap.

"Near to the volcano, there's so much static in the plume with so much lightning going on, and that's causing the finer particles to stick together and fall out near the volcano," said Dr Loughlin.

"But also the plume was quite wet, and the films of water around these particles of ash are also causing them to stick together and they get larger and heavier and so they fall out."

This process of aggregation of the ash continued as the plume journeyed to Britain over the course of some 12 hours.

Understanding how quickly it occurred and how much fine ash remained in the sky will prove vital, she said. Data will go to the UK Met Office and be used to refine models of ash dispersal.

"What we want to know is how much ash is left up in the plume because that's what the civil aviation authorities are interested in.

"What we need to understand is how that plume evolves through time and how that fine ash is removed from the air."

And a BBC story about a Stonehenge boy:

Stonehenge boy 'came from south'

Chemical tests on teeth from an ancient burial near Stonehenge indicate that the person in the grave grew up around the Mediterranean Sea.

The bones belong to a teenager who died 3,550 years ago and was buried with a distinctive amber necklace.

 

The conclusions come from analysis of different forms of the elements oxygen and strontium in his tooth enamel.

Analysis on a previous skeleton found near Stonehenge showed that that person was also a migrant to the area.

The "Boy with the Amber Necklace", as he is known to archaeologists, was found about 3km south-east of Stonehenge on Boscombe Down.

"He's around 14 or 15 years old and he's buried with this beautiful necklace," said Professor Jane Evans, head of archaeological science for the British Geological Survey.

"The position of his burial, the fact he's near Stonehenge, and the necklace all suggest he's of significant status."

Chemical record

She likened Stonehenge in the Bronze Age to Westminster Abbey today - a place where the "great and the good" were buried.

Tooth enamel forms in a child's first few years, so it stores a chemical record of the environment in which the individual grew up.

Two chemical elements found in enamel - oxygen and strontium - exist in different forms, or isotopes. The ratios of these isotopes found in enamel are particularly informative to archaeologists.

Most oxygen in teeth and bone comes from drinking water - which is itself derived from rain or snow.

In warm climates, drinking water contains a higher ratio of heavy oxygen (oxygen 18) to light oxygen (O-16) than in cold climates. So comparing the oxygen isotope ratio in teeth with that of drinking water from different regions can provide information about the climate in which a person was raised.

Most rocks carry a small amount of the element strontium (Sr), and the ratio of strontium 87 and strontium 86 isotopes varies according to local geology.

The isotope ratio of strontium in a person's teeth can provide information on the geological setting where that individual lived in childhood.

Alpine archer

By combining the techniques, archaeologists can gather data pointing to regions where a person may have been raised.

Tests carried out several years ago on another burial known as the "Amesbury Archer" show that he was raised in a colder climate than that found in Britain.

Analysis of the strontium and oxygen isotopes in his teeth showed that his most likely childhood origin was in the Alpine foothills of Germany.

"Isotope analysis of tooth enamel from both these people shows that the two individuals provide a contrast in origin, which highlights the diversity of people who came to Stonehenge from across Europe," said Professor Evans.

The Amesbury Archer was discovered around 5km from Stonehenge. His is a rich Copper Age burial, and contains some of the earliest gold and copper objects found in Britain.

An African story from the BBC:

Animal populations surge in Ugandan national parks

The number of animals in Uganda's national parks and game reserves has soared over the past decade, the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) says.

The latest figures show that the population of some species has doubled since 1999, spokeswoman Lillian Nsubuga said.

Wildlife had benefited from improved monitoring and the expulsion of rebels from the country, she added.

The animals on the rise include buffalos, giraffes and elephants.

New statistics show that the population with the biggest increase is that of the Impala, a grazing antelope.

The number of Impala in Uganda has surged to more than 35,000, from around 1,600 at the time of the last census in 1999.

Hippopotamuses, waterbucks, and zebras are also on the increase.

Ms Nsubuga said the UWA had been able to reduce poaching by improving the monitoring of national parks and reserves and by offering incentives to local communities to protect wildlife.

Since the expulsion of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) from northern Uganda, wildlife officials have also been able to limit poaching in Murchison Falls National Park.

"We can't say that poaching is no longer a problem, but we have been able to reduce it", Ms Nsubuga said.

English like not wot is spoke - from the BBC:

Actress Emma Thompson attacks use of sloppy language

Actress Emma Thompson has spoken out against the use of sloppy language.

The 51-year-old Oscar winner told the Radio Times that people who did not speak properly made her feel "insane".

She said: "We have to reinvest, I think, in the idea of articulacy as a form of personal human freedom and power."

Ms Thompson added that on a visit to her old school she told pupils not to use slang words such as "likes" and "innit".

"I told them, 'Just don't do it. Because it makes you sound stupid and you're not stupid."'

She said: "There is the necessity to have two languages - one that you use with your mates and the other that you need in any official capacity."

'Street speak'

Responding to her comments, English language specialist Prof Clive Upton, from the University of Leeds, said that "street speak" was not necessarily a problem.

He said: "There are certain places where the sort of street speak which a lot of teenagers go in for just doesn't cut the mustard.

"If they do deploy the sort of language they're using on the streets in formal settings then it could well be a disadvantage to them but at other times it's quite clearly the way they get along, the way that they signal they belong in a group, the way that they fit in.

"And we all do that in our professional lives as well. We've got all our acronyms and our little words that we use that send a signal - I'm one of the club."

Mike Clarke from Bideford in Devon contacted the BBC News website to show his support for Ms Thompson's stance.

He said: "I entirely agree with her comments - I have been a solicitor for over 25 years and have to communicate and engage with people with widely differing verbal ability and understanding. I despise both extremes - dumbing down language, just as much as 'poshing' it up.

"Both are endemic today and both demonstrate the very worst kind of patronising arrogance.

"They stem from a desire to set one's self apart from the other party - it's cultural snobbishness and ironic that it should often emanate from those who would consider themselves to be at opposing ends of the social spectrum."

Ms Thompson, who has written a new version of the musical My Fair Lady, also told the magazine that she was not interested in having plastic surgery.

"It really does seem to me to be quite psychologically dysfunctional and part of this ridiculous culture of perfection."

As a separate article to the above, also from the BBC:

Teen slang: What's, like, so wrong with like?

By Denise Winterman BBC News Magazine

Actress Emma Thompson says young people make themselves sound stupid by speaking slang outside of school. But while the use of the word "like" might annoy her, it fulfils a useful role in everyday speech.

"That's, like, so unfair."

One response to Emma Thompson's comments likely to trigger a rush of steam from her ears.

The Oscar winner has spoken out against the use of sloppy language. She says people who speak improperly make her feel "insane" and she criticises teenagers for using words such as "like" and "innit".

But is peppering one's sentences with "like" such a heinous crime against the English tongue?

Language experts are more understanding of teen culture than Thompson, pointing out the word's many uses. It's the unconventional uses that are probably getting the actress hot under the collar. One of the most common is using "like" as a filler word in a conversation.

But fillers are a way we all stall for time when speaking and historically always have. It has nothing to do with sloppiness, says John Ayto, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang.

"It is not a lazy use of language, that is a common fallacy along non-linguists," he says. "We all use fillers because we can't keep up highly-monitored, highly-grammatical language all the time. We all have to pause and think.

"We have always used words to plug gaps or make sentences run smoothly. They probably did in Anglo Saxon times, it's nothing new."

But crucially, we often use non-word fillers, such at "um" and "ah". The fact that "like" is an actual word could be why Thompson doesn't like it.

"When words break out from a specific use and become commonly used in a different way, people come down on them," says Robert Groves, editor on the English team at Collins Dictionaries.

"Using 'um' may seem more correct to Emma Thompson because using 'like' as a filler is not a feature of the language she uses. The more disassociated you are from the group that uses a word in a different way, the more that use stands out. It will be invisible to teenagers."

Another common use of "like" by young people is as a quotative, which is a grammatical device to mark reported speech. For example: "She was like, 'you aren't using that word correctly' and I was like, 'yes I am'."

It is also commonly used to indicate a metaphor or exaggeration. "I, like, died of embarrassment when you told me to stop using slang." Alternatively, it is employed to introduce a facial expression, gesture or sound. A speaker may say "I was like..." and then hold their hands up, shrug or roll their eyes.

While certain uses of language - such as fillers - have probably always been around, the appropriaton of "like" in this context can be traced to a familiar source of so much modern day slang- California's Valley Girls.

"Many of these uses of 'like' originate in America," says Mr Grove. "They were probably introduced into British English through the media, like films and television."

Using "like" in this way is also about signalling membership of a club, says English language specialist Professor Clive Upton, from the University of Leeds.

"If they [young people] do deploy the sort of language they're using on the streets in formal settings then it could well be a disadvantage to them but at other times it's quite clearly the way they get along, the way that they signal they belong in a group, the way that they fit in.

"And we all do that in our professional lives as well. We've got all our acronyms and our little words that we use that send a signal - I'm one of the club."

Thompson just isn't part of the "like" club.

From the BBC news today. A report from Relate:

Relate survey suggests mid-life crisis 'begins in 30s'

Work and relationship pressures make the mid-30s the start of many British people's unhappiest decade, a survey suggests.

Of those questioned, more people aged 35 to 44 said that they felt lonely or depressed than in other age groups.

The survey also suggested that busy parents were using Facebook and similar sites to stay in touch with children.

Relationship advice charity Relate, which is behind the research, said it revealed a "true mid-life crisis".

Of those surveyed, 21% of men and women aged 35 to 44 said they felt lonely a lot of the time, and a similar percentage said that bad relationships, either at work or home, had left them feeling depressed.

The same proportion said they felt closer to friends than family, and a quarter said they wished they had more time for their family.

Life stress

Claire Tyler, Relate's chief executive, said: "Traditionally we associated the midlife crisis with people in their late 40s to 50s, but the report reveals that this period could be reaching people earlier than we would expect.

"It's no coincidence that we see people in this age group in the biggest numbers at Relate."

 

Professor Cary Cooper, the chairman of the charity and a researcher in work stress at Lancaster University, said that things were only likely to worsen in the current economic climate, as more was demanded of fewer employees.

He said: "We're already working the longest hours in Europe - if you constantly work people long hours it's not good for their health.

"The annual cost of work-related mental health problems is estimated at £28 billion, so it's clearly a massive problem."

The survey, conducted in collaboration with phone and broadband firm Talk Talk, revealed that 28% of 35 to 44-year-olds questioned said they had left a job because of a bad working relationship with a colleague.

It also shed light on how family relationships are standing up to modern life.

While most people described their relationship with their partner as in positive terms, one in five were worried about the current financial climate.

Working long hours, arguments, proper division of household chores and poor sex were cited equally by men and women as a the most common sources of problems.

Dr Jane McCartney, a chartered psychologist with an interest in adult mental health, said that it was possible that the results for 35 to 44-year-olds might be slightly skewed by the willingness of people in that age group to be frank about depression and loneliness, compared to older people surveyed.

She added: "However, there might certainly be a grain of truth in what they've found - there are higher expectations on people of this age in terms of what they've achieved in their careers and family life."

A major report on the perilous state of the world's plant. From the BBC:

One-fifth of world's plants at risk of extinction

By David Shukman Environment correspondent, BBC News, Texas

One-fifth of the world's plants - the foundation of life on Earth - are at risk of extinction, a study concludes.

Researchers have sampled almost 4,000 species, and conclude that 22% should be classified as "threatened" - the same alarming rate as for mammals.

A further 33% of species were too poorly understood to be assessed.

The analysis comes from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the Natural History Museum and International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

There are an estimated 380,000 plant species in all, and many are victims of habitat loss - typically the clearing of forests for agriculture.

Species in tropical rainforests are found to be at greatest risk.

The study, known as the Sampled Red List Index for Plants, is an attempt to provide the most accurate assessment so far.

 

Previous studies have focused on the most threatened plants or particular regions.

This one instead sampled species from each of the five main groups of plants, and its authors argue that as a result, their conclusions are more credible.

The report comes ahead of the UN Biodiversity Conference in Nagoya in Japan next month where ministers are due to discuss why conservation targets keep being missed.

Launching the findings, Kew's director, Professor Stephen Hopper, said the study would provide a baseline from which to judge future losses.

"We cannot sit back and watch plant species disappear - plants are the basis of all life on Earth, providing clean air, water, food and fuel.

"Every breath we take involves interacting with plants. They're what we all depend on."

Medicinal properties

The study investigated the key types of plants, including mosses, ferns, orchids and legumes like peas and beans.

The fear among botanists is that species are being wiped out before they can be researched, potentially losing valuable medicinal properties.

Plant-based remedies are the only source of healthcare in the world's poorest countries, and have proved essential in combating conditions including malaria and leukaemia.

Another concern is that we have become dependent on a narrow range of plants with a limited genetic base.

The report estimates that 80% of the calories consumed worldwide are derived from just 12 different species.

The findings add urgency to the work of Kew's Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst in Sussex, which has now gathered some 1.8 billion seeds from around the world.

The samples are catalogued and stored in underground cold rooms as a safeguard against future losses.

The collection includes seeds from plants that have already been judged extinct, including a species of tree from Pakistan and an orchid from Ecuador.

Another victim is a species of olive tree from the South Atlantic island of St Helena.

The only traces of its existence are a few dried pressings of its leaves, and a tiny sample of DNA kept in a plastic test-tube in a freezer.

 

Fancy a holiday with a difference? From the BBC:

'Space hotel' plan unveiled in Russia

A Russian company has unveiled an ambitious plan to launch a "cosmic hotel" for wealthy space tourists.

Orbital Technologies says its "comfortable" four-room guest house could be in orbit by 2016, Russia's RIA Novosti news agency reports.

Guests would be ferried to the hotel on a Soyuz shuttle of the type used to transport cosmonauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

The Moscow-based firm did not reveal how the hotel would be built or funded.

Up until now space tourists, such as American businessman Dennis Tito, have squeezed into the cramped ISS, alongside astronauts and their experiments.

The new hotel would offer greater comforts, according to Sergei Kostenko, chief executive of Orbital Technologies.

High flyers

"Our planned module inside will not remind you of the ISS. A hotel should be comfortable inside, and it will be possible to look at the Earth through large portholes," he told RIA Novosti.

The hotel would be aimed at wealthy individuals and people working for private companies who want to do research in space, Mr Kostenko said.

It would follow the same orbit as the International Space Station.

The first module would have four cabins, designed for up to seven passengers, who would be packed into a space of 20 cubic metres (706 cubic feet).

Mr Kostenko did not reveal the price of staying in the hotel.

However he did say that food would be suited to individual preferences, and that organisers were thinking of employing celebrity chefs to cook the meals before they were sent into space.

It is not clear how the "cosmic hotel" would be built, but the company's website names Energia, Russia's state-controlled spacecraft manufacturer, as the project's general contractor.

Energia builds the Soyuz capsules and Progress cargo ships which deliver crew and supplies to the ISS.

Safe haven

Mr Kostenko said that "a number of agreements on partnership have already been signed" with Energia and the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos).

The project has Russian and American investors willing to inject hundreds of millions of dollars, he added.

Alexey Krasnov, head of manned space missions at Roscosmos, told the Associated Press news agency the proposed hotel could provide a temporary haven for the crew of the ISS, in case of an emergency.

However, doubts about the project were raised by Jim Oberg, a Houston-based space consultant and expert on the Russian space program.

"Why Russia would spend the required funds is a compelling question that has significant implications for its future commitment to the ISS," he told AP.

This latest plan is not the first time a space hotel has been mooted.

In 2009 the Barcelona-based architects of The Galactic Suite Space Resort said their orbiting hotel was on target to accept its first paying guests by 2012.

In 2007, Genesis II, an experimental spacecraft designed to test the viability of a space hotel, was successfully sent into orbit by Bigelow Aerospace, a private company founded by an American hotel tycoon.

They came from outer space, took one look at us, and fled:
A story from the BBC:

A distant Earth-like exoplanet 'could have life'

By Katia Moskvitch Science reporter, BBC News

Astronomers have detected an Earth-like exoplanet that may have just the right kind of conditions to support life.

Gliese 581g lies some 20 light-years away in its star's "Goldilocks zone" - a region surface temperatures would allow the presence of liquid water.

Scientists say that the newly found world could also potentially have an atmosphere.

Their findings, made with the Keck telescope in Hawaii, appear in the Astrophysical Journal.

The researchers, from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, have been studying the movement of the planet's parent star, a red dwarf called Gliese 581, for 11 years.

Their observations have revealed a number of exoplanets spinning around the star.

Possibility of life

Recently they discovered two new alien worlds, so together with the previous findings, this brings the number of planets orbiting Gliese 581 to six.

But the most important new revelation is that one of those worlds might be the most Earth-like planet yet identified.

"Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," said Steven Vogt, an astronomer at UCSC.

"The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common."

Gliese 581g has a mass about three to four times that of Earth. It orbits its sun in 37 days and is thought to be a rocky world. It has enough gravity to possibly have an atmosphere.

Gliese 581g is located in its star's "Goldilocks zone" - a zone in space where temperatures are neither too hot nor to cold for liquid water.

Such a zone defines the region in a star-centered orbit where an Earth-like planet could sustain that water on its surface - and therefore life.

"We had planets on both sides of the habitable zone - one too hot and one too cold - and now we have one in the middle that's just right," said Dr Vogt.

The planet's average surface temperature is estimated to be between -12C and -31C.

But unlike Earth, this alien world has one side always facing its sun and the other side constantly in the dark. So in-between the two sides, between shadow and light, there could be an area where life could potentially thrive.

"Any emerging life forms would have a wide range of stable climates to choose from and to evolve around, depending on their longitude," said Dr Vogt.

Alien worlds

The first exoplanet orbiting a star was detected more than a decade ago.

Since then, nearly 500 other worlds have been found beyond our Solar System, many of them Jupiter-like gas giants.

Now, astronomers are hoping to spot more exoplanets where life could be possible.

"We're at exactly that threshold now with finding habitable planets," said Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution, a co-author of the study.

Dr Vogt agreed: "The number of systems with potentially habitable planets is probably on the order of 10 or 20%, and when you multiply that by the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, that's a large number," he said.

"There could be tens of billions of these systems in our galaxy."

This story from the BBC is one for Lori:

Ancient giant penguin unearthed in Peru

By Katia Moskvitch Science reporter, BBC News

The fossil of a giant penguin that lived 36 million years ago has been discovered in Peru.

Scientists say the find shows that key features of the plumage were present quite early on in penguin evolution.

The team writes in Science journal that the penguin's feathers were brown and grey, distinct from the black "tuxedo" look of modern penguins.

It was nearly twice the size of an Emperor Penguin, the largest living species.

The bird, named Inkayacu paracasensis, lived during the late Eocene period.

It had a long, straight beak, much longer than that of its modern relatives.

The fossil was found in Reserva Nacional de Paracas in Peru. The scientists nicknamed the penguin "Pedro" - after a scaly character in a Colombian TV series.

One of the highlights of the study was the presence of well-preserved feathers and scales.

"Before this fossil, we had no evidence about the feathers, colours and flipper shapes of ancient penguins," said Julia Clarke, a palaeontologist at the University of Texas, US, and lead author of the study.

"We had questions and this was our first chance to start answering them."

She explained to BBC News that the fossil also shows that penguins' main physical features evolved millions of years ago, but the colour of penguin feathers switched from reddish brown and grey to black-and-white quite recently.

Great divers

It is the particular shape of flippers and feathers that makes penguins such powerful swimmers.

During wing-propelled diving - the so-called aquatic flight - these birds are able to generate propulsive forces in an environment about 800 times denser and 70 times more viscous than air.

"One thing that's interesting in living penguins is that how deep they dive correlates with body size," said Dr Clarke.

"The heavier the penguin, the deeper it dives. If that holds true for any penguins, then the dive depths achieved by these giant forms would've been very different."

To get an idea about the colour of the feathers of the long-dead penguin, the team examined melanosomes - microscopic structures in the fossil, whose size, shape and arrangement determine the colour of a bird's feathers.

"Insights into the colours of extinct organisms can reveal clues to their ecology and behaviour," said co-author Jakob Vinther of Yale University, US.

"But most of all, I think it is simply just cool to get a look at the colour of a remarkable extinct organism, such as a giant fossil penguin."

The researchers say that the find, together with some other recent discoveries from the same area, is just another evidence of a rich diversity of giant penguin species in the late Eocene period of low-latitude Peru.

"This is an extraordinary site to preserve evidence of structures like scales and feathers," said Dr Clarke.

"So there's incredible potential for new discoveries that can change our view not only of penguin evolution, but of other marine vertebrates."

This could save a lot of irritation. More from the BBC:

Change to 'Bios' will make for PCs that boot in seconds

By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

New PCs could start in just seconds, thanks to an update to one of the oldest parts of desktop computers.

The upgrade will spell the end for the 25-year-old PC start-up software known as Bios that initialises a machine so its operating system can get going.

The code was not intended to live nearly this long, and adapting it to modern PCs is one reason they take as long as they do to warm up.

Bios' replacement, known as UEFI, will predominate in new PCs by 2011.

The acronym stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface and is designed to be more flexible than its venerable predecessor.

"Conventional Bios is up there with some of the physical pieces of the chip set that have been kicking around the PC since 1979," said Mark Doran, head of the UEFI Forum, which is overseeing development of the technology.

Mr Doran said the creators of the original Bios only expected it to have a lifetime of about 250,000 machines - a figure that has long been surpassed.

"They are as amazed as anyone else that now it is still alive and well in a lot of systems," he said. "It was never really designed to be extensible over time."

AMI is a firm that develops Bios software. Brian Richardson, of AMI's technical marketing team, said the age of the Bios was starting to hamper development as 64-bit computing became more common and machines mutated beyond basic desktops and laptops.

"Drive size limits that were inherent to the original PC design - two terabytes - are going to become an issue pretty soon for those that use their PC a lot for pictures and video," he said.

Similarly, he said, as tablet computers and other smaller devices become more popular having to get them working with a PC control system was going to cause problems.

The problem emerges, he said, because Bios expects the machine it is getting going to have the same basic internal set-up as the first PCs.

As a result, adding extra peripherals, such as keyboards that connect via USB rather than the AT or PS/2 ports of yesteryear, has been technically far from straightforward.

Similarly, Bios forces USB drives to be identified to a PC as either a hard drive or a floppy drive. This, said Mr Richardson, could cause problems when those thumb drives are used as a boot disc to get a system working while installing or re-installing an operating system.

Said Mr Doran: "Compared to many other components, the rate of evolution of the firmware pieces has been phenomenally slow."

UEFI frees any computer from being based around the blueprint and specifications of the original PCs. It does not specify that a keyboard will only connect via a PC's AT or PS/2 port.

"All it says is that somewhere in the machine there's a device that can produce keyboard-type information," said Mr Doran.

Under UEFI, it will be much easier for that input to come a soft keyboard, gestures on a touchscreen or any future input device.

"The extensible part of the name is important because we are going to have to live with this for a long time," said Mr Doran.

He added that UEFI started life as an Intel-only specification known as EFI. It morphed into a general standard when the need to replace Bios industry-wide became more widely recognised.

The first to see the benefits of swapping old-fashioned Bios for UEFI have been system administrators who have to oversee potentially thousands of PCs in data centres or in offices around the world.

Before now, said Mr Doran, getting those machines working has been "pretty painful" because of the limited capabilities of Bios.

By contrast, he said, UEFI has much better support for basic net protocols which should mean that remote management is easier from the "bare metal" upwards.

For consumers, said Mr Doran, the biggest obvious benefit of a machine running UEFI will be the speed with which it starts up.

"At the moment it can be 25-30 seconds of boot time before you see the first bit of OS sign-on," he said. "With UEFI we're getting it under a handful of seconds."

"In terms of boot speed we're not at instant-on yet but it is already a lot better than conventional Bios can manage," he said "and we're getting closer to that every day."

Some PC and laptop makers are already using UEFI as are many firms that make embedded computers. More, said Mr Richardson, will result as motherboard makers complete the shift to using it.

He said that 2011 would be the year that sales of UEFI machines start to dominate.

"I would say we are at the edge of the tipping point right now," he said.

Another story from the BBC, but in a less serious note:

Ig Nobel for 'whale breathalyser'

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

A London-based scientist's use of a remote-control helicopter to get breath samples from whales has led to her being awarded an "Ig Nobel" Prize.

Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse's technique is used to collect gases and mucus exhaled by the giant mammals.

The tongue-in-cheek Ig Nobel awards for "improbable research" have become almost as famous as the real Nobels.

Other research lauded at the Harvard Igs ceremony included proof that germs tend to cling to bearded scientists.

Other slightly whacky science celebrated at the US ceremony included research that proved the symptoms of asthma could be treated by riding on a roller-coaster and wearing socks outside your shoes could reduce your chances of slipping on an ice path.

Dr Acevedo-Whitehouse, of the Zoological Society of London, was present to receive her award, along with colleagues Agnes Rocha-Gosselin and Diane Gendron.

Not to put it too finely, the trio collect "whale snot". They hang petri dishes under a mini-chopper and fly the vehicle over a surfacing whale just as it evacuates its blow-hole.

The exhaled gases and mucus blast the dishes which are then taken back to the lab to study the disease-causing micro-organisms carried by the animals.

The remarkable method of obtaining the samples was featured in the BBC series Oceans.

Dr Acevedo-Whitehouse told BBC News she was delighted to receive the spoof honour: "I was slightly bemused at first, to be honest, but I think that it is important to recognize (and communicate) that science can be fun. My colleagues and I are actually quite proud to receive this award now. Beyond the actual results (which are actually very interesting) we certainly have had fun doing our whale-snot research!"

This was the 21st Ig Nobel ceremony. The awards are run by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research. They are supposed to "first make people laugh, and then make them think".

All the research, bar some special prizes, is real and published in bona fide academic journals. As part of the fun, the prizes are also handed over by genuine Nobel Laureates.

As usual, UK-based scientists featured heavily among the winning teams.

"Usually when you are an eccentric, you get punished. But in Britain, if you are an eccentric, you're kind of celebrated," awards organiser Marc Abrahams told BBC News.

The full list of winners:

Engineering Prize: Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse (UK) and colleagues for perfecting a method to collect whale snot, using a remote-control helicopter.

Medicine Prize: Simon Rietveld (Netherlands) and colleagues for discovering that symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller-coaster ride.

Transportation Planning Prize: Toshiyuki Nakagaki (Japan) and colleagues for using slime mould to determine the optimal routes for railroad tracks.

Physics Prize: Lianne Parkin (New Zealand) and colleagues for demonstrating that, on icy footpaths in wintertime, people slip and fall less often if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes.

Peace Prize: Richard Stephens (UK) and colleagues for confirming the widely held belief that swearing relieves pain.

Public health Prize: Manuel Barbeito (US) and colleagues for determining by experiment that microbes cling to bearded scientists.

Economics Prize: Awarded to the executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money — ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof.

Chemistry Prize: Eric Adams (US) and colleagues for disproving the old belief that oil and water don't mix. The research, supported by BP, was published under the title: "Review of Deep Oil Spill Modeling Activity Supported by the Deep Spill JIP and Offshore Operator's Committee".

Management Prize: Alessandro Pluchino (Italy) and colleagues for demonstrating mathematically that organisations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random.

Biology Prize: Libiao Zhang (China) and colleagues for scientifically documenting fellatio in fruit bats.

A Chinese space story from the BBC:

China launches Moon mission

By Katia Moskvitch Science reporter, BBC News

A Chinese rocket carrying a probe destined for the Moon has blasted into space.

A Long March 3C rocket with the Chang'e-2 probe took off from Xichang launch centre at about 1100 GMT.

The rocket will shoot the craft into the trans-lunar orbit, after which the satellite is expected to reach the Moon in about five days.

Chang'e-2 will be used to test key technologies and collect data for future landings.

China says it will send a rover on its next mission, and it also has ambitions to put humans on the surface of the lunar body at some future date.

The Xinhua News Agency said Chang'e-2 would circle just 15km (nine miles) above the rocky terrain in order to take photographs of possible landing locations.

It is China's second lunar probe - the first was launched in 2007. The craft stayed in space for 16 months before being intentionally crashed on to the Moon's surface.

China launched its first manned flight into low-Earth orbit in 2003; and two more followed, with the most recent one in 2008.

So far, only three countries have managed to independently send humans into space: China, Russia and the US.

In 2008, a Chinese astronaut, fighter pilot Zhai Zhigang, performed a spacewalk - the first in his country's history.

He stayed outside the Shenzhou-7 capsule for 15 minutes; the exercise was seen as key to China's ambition to build an orbiting station in the near future.

An article from the BBC about this planet's past:

Panama Canal fossils reveal ancient collision of worlds

By Howard Falcon-Lang Science reporter, BBC News

It was the biggest event in our planet's history since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Three million years ago, the Americas collided.

The creation of the Panama Isthmus - the narrow land bridge that joins the two continents - wreaked havoc on land, sea and air. It triggered extinctions, diverted ocean currents and transformed climate.

Now a multi-billion dollar project to widen the Panama Canal is set to reveal new secrets about the event that changed the world.

Panama is a tiny country, but in a perfect location.

Positioned just north of the equator in the Caribbean, its famous canal is the strategic hub of the global shipping industry.

The 80km (50-mile) -long Panama Canal, completed in 1914, connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Its existence means that ships can avoid - at a price - the treacherous 8,000 mile journey round Cape Horn, the southernmost tip of South America.

Opportunity knocks

Three years ago work began to widen the Panama Canal for the first time in its history. Authorities hope that this will increase revenue from shipping.

However, the massive excavations have also proved to be a "gold mine" for scientists, trying to uncover Panama's hidden past.

Dr Camilo Montes, a geologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, explained: "What this represents is a once-in-a-century chance to find out what really happened when the Americas collided".

As entire hillsides are being blasted away to expand the canal, amazing fossils are emerging that shed light on this key event. However, scientists only have a short window to collect the fossils before they are re-buried beneath concrete.

"Basically what we are doing is a rescue effort", said Dr Carlos Jaramillo, another geologist at STRI. "It's a race against time. When a new fossil site is discovered we have two, maybe three months. That's all!"

"We work all day, every day, in the canal. Whether there is blazing sun or pouring rain, we always have a team out searching for the fossils."

One of those fossil hunters is Aldo Rincon, a young student with sharp eyes. Last year, he stumbled upon one of the most important discoveries so far: the jaws and bones of horses, rhinos, and camels.

He told the BBC News of the moment of discovery: "I spotted a row of teeth sticking out of the mud. The rest of the team had scattered. For a moment, I was alone with these beautiful fossils, it was so exciting."

Clash of civilisations

What Mr Rincon has found helps us better understand an extraordinary event that scientists call the "Great American Interchange".

Dr Bruce MacFadden, an expert on fossil mammals at the University of Florida, US, explained: "When the Americas collided about three million years, it caused of a kind of land rush".

"Animals that were native to North America - sabre-toothed cats, horses, camels and elephants - surged south across the land bridge. Animals from South America such as giant sloths and armadillos, moved north".

In an ecological experiment on a scale never before seen, the animals of two continents freely mixed. Unable to compete with the waves of invaders, some species on both continents went extinct.

The event helped shape the ecology of the Americas to this day.

However, Aldo Rincon's new discovery muddies the water. The animals that he has found were all natives of North America, but 17 million years old - dating from long before the Great American Interchange.

They show that the Panama Isthmus may have started to form much earlier than previously thought, allowing some migrants into Central America.

Other fossil discoveries have also hinted at this possibility.

Dr MacFadden said: "Giant predatory birds dubbed 'terror birds' seem to have migrated from between the Americas as early as five million years ago."

"It is possible that long before the seaway finally closed, a chain of islands spanned the gap. Perhaps Terror Birds and other animals were the original 'island-hoppers', migrating from one island to the next."

UK climate

The formation of the Panama Isthmus, however, did not only affect the Americas. It also transformed global climate, and might even be responsible for the UK's dismal and damp summers.

Dr Pierre Sepulchre, a climate scientist at the Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute, France, told BBC News: "When the Panama Isthmus formed, ocean currents got re-routed.

"Warm Caribbean waters that had once flowed through the gap between the Americas were now forced northwest towards Europe, creating the Gulf Stream."

Without the Gulf Stream, the UK would have a freezing climate like that of Newfoundland on the east coast of Canada.

But there were other even more dramatic effects as well.

"Its controversial," said Dr Sepulchre, "but some scientists think that the formation of the Gulf Stream transported extra moisture into the Arctic atmosphere. This fell as snow, triggering the build up of the Greenland Ice Sheet."

In turn, this may have kick-started the Ice Age.

So, the formation of a tiny land bridge in one remote part of the tropics seems to have triggered a 'domino effect' that influenced the whole world.

Sex in the Caribbean

Back in Panama, the land bridge also allowed coral reefs to thrive for the first time.

Today, the Caribbean boasts some of the world's finest coral reefs, the mainstay of its tourist industry. But this wasn't always the case.

Dr Aaron O'Dea, a palaeontologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, spends his time exploring wild stretches of Panama's coast in a small inflatable boat.

"I've been in some terrible scrapes," he told the BBC News. "I've been hit huge waves, half drowned and battered against rocks!"

What keeps him going is his quest for fossil shells.

He collects bulky samples from rocks of different ages and laboriously counts every species present. In this way he builds a picture of how marine life has changed in the Caribbean over millions of years.

His findings are startling. Before the Panama Isthmus formed, there were few coral reefs. Afterwards corals abound.

Dr O'Dea explained: "At first, nutrient-rich Pacific waters flowed into the Caribbean creating a kind of pea soup, full of plankton, quite unsuitable for corals. However, when the Isthmus formed, Pacific currents were cut off, waters became crystal clear, and coral reefs boomed."

Intriguingly, at the same time, marine animals changed from their normal habit of cloning themselves and started to reproduce sexually.

"It all about food," said Dr O'Dea. "When it's in short supply, animals tend to switch to sexual reproduction because it gives them the edge over their competitors."

Worryingly, what Dr O'Dea is learning about the past also may provide a dire warning for the future.

"Compared to the ancient coral reefs that I study, the modern reefs are in an awful state," he said.

"What's happening is that fertiliser from agriculture is being flushed into the Caribbean. The fertiliser is feeding plankton, returning the sea to the pea soup state that existed before the Isthmus formed. This, in turn, is killing the corals."

So, as scientist learn more about the formation of the Panama Isthmus - the event that changed the world - it is just possible that their findings may help safeguard the future of the Caribbean's fragile ecosystems.

"That's my hope," said Dr O'Dea, "but it will take a lot to reverse the damage that's already been done."

A localish story to me, from the BBC:

The article contains a video clip which I cannot post. Click here to go to see it.

Young deer in Gloucestershire seen living with cows

Steve Knibbs searches for a young deer near Stroud

A young deer has been spotted living among a herd of cattle in Gloucestershire.



The creature was first seen two weeks ago by people in holiday homes at Wesley Farm, near Frampton Mansell.



The farm's owner said the young buck had been seen resting and grazing among the cows in a field.



A spokesman for the British Deer Society said it was a rare incident and that the animal had probably become separated from its herd.



Hege Usborn, from Westley Farm, said: "He was first spotted by some of our cottage guests and they told me they'd seen it every day.



"I thought, 'that's amazing', so I went with the dog and there he was.



'Social company'



"I think he's a young male and maybe he's been thrown out of the group he was living in.



"[When startled] he runs to the cows for cover and shelter rather than disappearing off into the other direction."



British Deer Society training officer Dave Gossin said it was likely to be a fallow deer, about two years old, but too young to rut.



"It is unusual for deer to integrate with domestic stock," he said.



"While they will share the same habitat, to integrate in a herd structure is uncommon.



"I suspect he may have become separated from the female group - or pushed out - and not yet made any contact with other deer, so he is probably getting social company from the cattle."

From the BBC:

A new world record for human mattress dominoes has been set in Newcastle, organisers have claimed.

Four hundred mattresses were toppled in under four minutes on Saturday morning. The previous record of 380 was set in New York City two weeks ago.

The event at a warehouse in Newburn was organised by Palatine Beds and involved a line of volunteers falling back on mattresses like dominoes.

The toppling is still to be verified by Guinness World Records.

The event was recorded and the video will be sent on to see if a new world record will be confirmed.

Click here to see a video clip showing the highlights
.

Fantastic story Loro; nice find

A major catastrophe has been averted. From the BBC:

World conker games crisis averted

A crisis in this year's World Conker Championships has been averted after a call for "good-sized" nuts was made.

The competition in Northamptonshire was threatened by a shortage of conkers when disease and pestilence blighted the trees on which they grow.

Organisers at Ashton Conker Club in Polebrook sent out an SOS when local trees only produced small nuts.

Club secretary John Hadman said there were now enough big conkers for the 360 entrants to fight it out for the title.

Now in its 46th year, the 360 players from 17 countries will compete for the title next Sunday.

'Out of the playground'

Unlike in the school playground version of the game, the pastime's 11 rules are strictly observed.

These include a ban on reusing conkers from earlier games and disqualification of any player who causes a knotting of the laces three times.

Mr Hadman said: "We've taken the game out of the playground and turned it into a spectator sport.

"With the Commonwealth Games now upon us, who knows conkers might even be included next time."

The Campaign For Real Conkers warned of a possible conker shortage last month following poor August weather.

Many have fallen from trees before they are ripe enough to be used for the popular pastime.

A tale of some little cats from the BBC:

Experts baffled by 'small' Bangladesh tigers

By Ethirajan Anbarasan BBC News, Dhaka

Tigers prowling the famous mangrove forests of Bangladesh are nearly half the weight of other wild Bengal tigers in South Asia, a study has found.

The average weight of female tigers in the Sundarbans forests was 76.7kg (170lb), according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service research.

But other wild Bengal tigers in the region tipped the scales at 138.2 kg on average.

Researchers said this could be because Sundarbans tigers ate smaller deer.

The team believes the big cats found in the mangrove forest, which stretches from Bangladesh to India, could be among the world's smallest tigers.

They belong to one of nine sub-species of Bengal tiger in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan.

Smaller dinner

Researchers from the University of Minnesota and the Bangladesh Forest Department - who carried out the study for the US Fish and Wildlife Service - weighed three Sundarbans tigers.

Two of the animals were captured and sedated, but the other one had been killed by villagers.

Adam Barlow, one of the authors of the research, said they do not know why the Sundarbans tigers are so small.

"This could be related to the small size of deer available to tigers in the Sundarbans, compared to the larger deer and other prey available to tigers in other parts," he said.

It is estimated that between 300 and 500 Bengal tigers live in the Bangladesh side of the Sundarbans alone.

They are isolated from the next tiger population by a distance of up to 300km (190 miles).

Tigers are an endangered species. There are only about 3,500 left in the wild worldwide - less than one third of them breeding females.

Is this a significant development in 3D television? From the BBC news site:

Toshiba show 3DTV without glasses

Toshiba has launched what it claims are the first 3D television sets that do not require special glasses.

The two sets are able to create 3D effects in real time from standard film and television pictures.

The televisions use a special lenticular sheet to create an array of nine overlapping images.

A viewer sees different images with each eye, creating the illusion of a 3D picture.

The system is similar to that used in the Nintendo 3DS handheld console.

Both Toshiba televisions use the Cell processor - originally designed for the PlayStation 3 - to process the pictures.

Masaaki Oosumi, president of Toshiba Visual Products said it was "obviously more natural to watch TV without glasses".

However, the technology requires a person to be sat in an optimal position to see clear 3D images.

The electronics giant suggests a person sits 90cm (35in) from its 20in set and 65cm (25in) from the 12in screen. The picture is also best viewed with a 40-degree "sweet spot" in front of the set.

These limitations are why most manufacturers - including Sony, Samsung and Panasonic - use glasses to generate 3D effects.

These rely on images for each eye being broadcast one after the other in rapid succession.

Filters in the glasses flash on and off in sync with the picture, filtering the correct image to each eye. The brain recombines the image into a 3D picture.

3D TV is still in its infancy, but broadcasters are already ramping up efforts to provide content in the UK.

Last week, Sky launched Europe's first dedicated 3D television channel, whilst Virgin has launched a 3D movie channel.

Toshiba said the smaller version of its new sets will cost about 120,000 yen ($1,400), and the larger one will be double the price. It is also working on a larger 56 inch model.

It said it hoped to sell 1,000 units a month but currently has no plans to sell the sets abroad.

They were unveiled at the Ceatec electronics show in Tokyo, Japa

Another bee story from the BBC:

Rare bumblebees make comeback in Kent and Sussex

England's five rarest bumblebees have made a comeback in parts of Kent and Sussex, conservationists have said.

The five threatened species have spread their geographic range as a result of environmental schemes in Dungeness and Romney Marsh.

Measures to make the habitat more suitable include putting pollen and nectar-rich flower margins in fields.

Project leader Dr Nikki Gammans said she had not expected to see successful results so quickly.

The measures were introduced last year in a bid to bring the short-haired bumblebee back from New Zealand to the UK.

The species was last seen in the UK in 1988, but populations on the other side of the world have survived.

But the attempt to reintroduce the species failed when many of the insects died during hibernation.

Population decline

Dr Gammans said by creating the right conditions for the short-haired bumblebee, the five threatened species had flourished.

She said the bumblebees had all increased their ranges in the South East after decades of decline.

"We hoped that we would begin to see results like this for these species but we really didn't expect to see it quite so quickly," she said.

The five species are the large garden bumblebee, the shrill carder bee, the shanked carder bee, the moss carder bee and the brown banded carder bee.

The partnership project is being run by Natural England, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, the RSPB and Hymettus.

Next time I go past Didcot on the train and see those gigantic chimneys, I'll remember this story from the BBC. You can see those chimneys in the photo below, and they are the most obvious landmarks in Didcot.

Oxfordshire town sees human waste used to heat homes

By Dhruti Shah BBC News

Householders in Didcot have become the first in the UK to use gas made from their own human waste and supplied via the national grid to heat their homes.

Up to 200 Oxfordshire homes will be using biomethane made from sewage they had flushed away three weeks earlier.

British Gas, Thames Water and Scotia Gas Networks now hope to roll out the process across the UK.

According to an EU directive, by 2020 the UK must ensure 15% of the energy it produces comes from renewable sources.

Martin Orrill, head of energy, technology and innovation at British Gas told the BBC News website supplying this type of gas through the national grid was a logical step in the UK's bid to meet these targets.

He added that customers had no need to feel squeamish but should be proud of taking part in the unusual recycling effort.

"They will not notice any difference as the renewable energy source has no odour, and the infrastructure to deliver the gas is already in place," he said.

The whole process should take about 23 days from flush to finish.

The practice of using anaerobic digesters - carefully managed bacteria - to turn faeces into a means of generating electricity is already well established across the country.

But the additional plant that British Gas has installed at the Thames Water sewage treatment works in Didcot cleans up the spare biogas that is produced and turns it into biomethane suitable for household hobs and in gas central heating.

Mother-of-two Kathryn Rushton, 45, is among the householders whose gas supply now comes from sewage.

She said: "I told my children about it and at first they wrinkled their noses but then they thought it was a great idea.

"It's made from something we all produce and it's renewable. We're struggling to find sources of energy so we should use whatever we can. I'm definitely a supporter of this."

Other energy firms including United Utilities and Ecotricity have also announced their plans to inject biomethane straight into the network at a later date.

United Utilities told the BBC it hoped its £4.3m scheme, which would cater for 500 homes in Manchester, would be in place by summer 2011.

Mr Orrill said this £2.5m project had been hastened by the prospect of renewable heat incentives - a Labour proposal that was intended to encourage suppliers to support renewable technologies by rewarding them.

'Historic day'

He said the UK was renowned for having the "best gas grid in the world" and so was ideally suited to try out the technology.

John Morea, chief executive of Scotia Gas Networks, said the project involved "recycling at its very best" and the gas would be cleaned to the highest standards.

In a statement, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne commended the project and said: "This is an historic day for the companies involved, for energy from waste technologies, and for progress to increase the amount of renewable energy in the UK.

Last month Mr Huhne told MPs, that in the rush to put together a coalition deal between his party - the Lib Dems - and the Conservatives in May, he and Conservative Oliver Letwin "forgot" to include a reference to the incentives but said that it would be "an absolutely essential part" of meeting the government's renewable energy targets.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change told the BBC the government was still committed to meeting its energy targets but the details of the incentive proposals were under review.

"Clearly there are benefits to the scheme, but we must also consider the impact of the cost, particularly given the financial constraints we must work within and the potential impact that funding options could have on vulnerable people," she said.

But Mr Orrill remained optimistic. He said: "We're nervous but confident that the government will make the right decision.

"If they don't, then the demonstration process may have been for nothing and they would have missed an opportunity for the UK to make renewable gas on a commercial basis."

Thames Water's chief executive Martin Baggs agreed and said: "Every sewage works in Britain is a potential source of local renewable gas waiting to be put to use."

The Nobel prize for Physics has gone to 2 scientists at Manchester University for their work on graphene. This is an extraordinary substance (a form of carbon) and could eventually transform the world of electronics.

From the BBC:

Materials breakthrough wins Nobel

By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News

Two scientists have shared this year's Nobel Prize for Physics for their "groundbreaking" work on a material with amazing properties.

Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both at Manchester University, UK, took the prize for research on graphene.

Graphene is a flat sheet of carbon just one atom thick; it is almost completely transparent, but also extremely strong and a good conductor of electricity.

Its unique properties mean it could have a wide array of practical uses.

The researchers, along with several collaborators, were the first to isolate the atom-thick layers of carbon from the material graphite, which is used in pencil "lead".

The breakthrough could lead to the manufacture of innovative electronics, including faster computers, according to the Nobel Prize Foundation.

"I'm fine, I slept well. I didn't expect the Nobel Prize this year," said Professor Geim. He was talking over a telephone line to journalists assembled at a news conference in Stockholm, Sweden.

Professor Geim said his plans for the day would not change - he said he would go back to work and carry on with his research papers.

He added that he would "muddle on as before".

Between the sheets

Geim, 51, is a Dutch national while Novoselov, 36, holds British and Russian citizenship. Both are natives of Russia and started their careers in physics there.

The Nobels are valued at 10m Swedish Kronor (£900,000; 1m euros; $1.5m).

They first worked together in the Netherlands before moving to the UK. They were based at the University of Manchester when they published their groundbreaking research paper on graphene in October 2004.

Dr Novoselov is among the youngest winners of a prize that normally goes to scientists with decades of experience.

Graphene is a form of carbon. It is a flat layer of carbon atoms tightly packed into a two-dimensional honeycomb arrangement.

Because it is so thin, it is also practically transparent. As a conductor of electricity it performs as well as copper, and as a conductor of heat it outperforms all other known materials.

The unusual electronic, mechanical and chemical properties of graphene at the molecular scale promise ultra-fast transistors for electronics.

Some scientists have precicted that graphene could one day replace silicon - which is the current material of choice for transistors.

It could also yield incredibly strong, flexible and stable materials and find applications in transparent touch screens or solar cells.

Geim and Novoselov first isolated fine sheets of graphene from the graphite which is widely used in pencils.

A layer of graphite one millimetre thick actually consists of three million layers of graphene stacked on top of one another.

The layers are weakly held together and are therefore fairly simple to tear off and separate.

The researchers used ordinary sticky tape to rip off thin flakes from a piece of graphite.

Then they attached the flakes to a silicon plate and used a microscope to identify the thin layers of graphene among larger fragments of graphite and carbon scraps.

Professor Martin Rees, president of the UK's Royal Society commented: "It would be hard to envisage better exemplars of the value of enabling outstanding individuals to pursue 'open-ended' research projects whose outcome is unpredictable.

In an apparent reference to the threatened cuts to UK science funding, he added: "There are surely important lessons to be drawn by the government from the Nobel Committee's decision.

"The UK must sustain our science at a competitive level in a world where talent is mobile and other countries are advancing fast."

On Monday, the Nobel Foundation announced that British scientist Robert Edwards, the man who devised the fertility treatment IVF, had been awarded this year's prize for medicine.

Professor Peter Main, director of education and science at the Institute of Physics, said, "We're delighted to see two UK-based physicists take the prize.

"Following yesterday's win for Professor Edwards, there could be no clearer sign of just how much the UK punches above its international weight in a very competitive scientific world."

Ten years ago, Professor Geim and Professor Sir Michael Berry from the University of Bristol were jointly awarded an Ig Nobel prize for their experiments using magnetic fields to levitate live frogs.

These tongue-in-cheek awards for "improbable research" have become almost as famous as the real Nobels.

The Nobel prizes also cover chemistry, medicine, literature, peace and economics (more properly called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize). Laureates also receive a medal and a diploma.

I haven't been in The Sanctuary for a while and have enjoyed reading through the most recent posts.
I am in agreement with Emma Thompson about the "dumbing down" of language.
The story of "Poo Power" was strange but interesting . 
I am glad the bumblebees are making a comeback.

If you watch the BBC news this evening you may see an article about it - it was on at the lunchtime edition.

A surprising story from the BBC:

Indian language is new to science

By Daniel Boettcher BBC News

Researchers have identified a language new to science in a remote region of India.

Known as Koro, it appears to be distinct from other languages in the family to which it belongs; but it is also under threat.

Koro was discovered by a team of linguists on an expedition to Arunachal Pradesh, in north-eastern India.

The team was part of National Geographic's "Enduring Voices" project on threatened indigenous languages.

The researchers were searching for two other little-known languages spoken only in one small area.

As they heard and recorded these, they found a third which was completely new to them and had never before been listed.

"We didn't have to get far on our word list to realise it was extremely different in every possible way," said Dr David Harrison, one of the expedition leaders.

The linguists recorded thousands of words- and found Koro was distinct from other languages in the area.

It belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family, which includes around 150 languages spoken in India. But scientists were unable to find any others closely related to Koro within this group.

It is thought that around half of the world's 6,909 known languages are endangered and Koro itself is vulnerable. It has never been written down and is only spoken by between 800 and 1,200 people.

"We were finding something that was making its exit, was on its way out," said National Geographic Fellow Gregory Anderson.

"And if we had waited 10 years to make the trip, we might not have come across close to the number of speakers we found."

The team will be returning to India next month to continue their research on Koro.

They want to find out more about where it came from and how it was able to remain hidden until now.

Another fossil story from the BBC:

Dinosaur origins pushed further back in time

By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News

The first dinosaur-like creatures emerged up to nine million years earlier than previously thought.

That is the conclusion of a study on footprints found in 250 million-year-old rocks from Poland.

Writing in a Royal Society journal, a team has named the creature that made them Prorotodactylus.

The prints are small - measuring a few centimetres in length - which suggests the earliest dinosaur-like animals were about the size of domestic cats.

They would have weighed at most a kilogram or two, they walked on four legs and they were very rare animals.

Their footprints comprised only two or three per cent of the total footprints on this site.

The footprints date to just two million years after the end-Permian mass extinction - the worst mass extinction in the history of the planet.

According to Stephen Brusatte, from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who led the research: "In geological terms this is just the blink of an eye."

He told BBC News: "We can basically say that the dinosaur lineage originated in the immediate aftermath of this extinction which is a completely new idea and a very radical re-interpretation of the early history of dinosaurs".

In the end-Permian extinction event, more than 90% of all life on Earth was wiped out due to massive volcanic eruptions, sudden global warming and the stagnation of the oceans.

Up until recently, scientists had thought that dinosaurs emerged 15 to 20 million years after the mass extinction, when the planet had become more habitable.

But the new footprints suggest that the rise of dinosaurs was intimately related to the devastating extinction event.

"Without this mass extinction there would never have been dinosaurs," said Mr Brusatte.

"There's a degree of symmetry about that because when dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, that opened space for mammals," he added.

Although the footprints are characteristic of dinosaur-like creatures, they do not provide the absolute proof that a fossilised skeleton would.

"We'd rather have a skeleton because footprints are a little open to interpretation," Professor Mike Benton, from Bristol University, told BBC News.

He believes that the discovery is important - but he says it would have been published in one of the top two scientific journals in the world if Mr Brusatte had been able to provide further evidence for his claim.

"I bet you if (he had found) a skeleton which was unequivocal it would have been a front page."

The findings are published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

 

I'd hazard a guess that more people speak Klingon
 
Good story Loro

Back in 1999, someone wrote their thesis on the language Klingon and its users. It is a serious look at the subject and if you want to look at it click here

.

The rings of Saturn. from the BBC:

Giant moon collision 'may have formed Saturn's rings'

By Katia Moskvitch Science reporter, BBC News

Saturn's rings may have formed when a large moon with an icy mantle and rocky core spiralled into the nascent planet.

A US scientist has suggested that the tidal forces ripped off some of the moon's mantle before the actual impact.

The theory could shed light on the rings' mainly water-ice composition that has puzzled researchers for decades.

The scientist announced her idea at a conference in Pasadena, US.

Though the rings are now thought to consist of 90-95% water-ice, Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder said the slight rock content is due to the interplanetary dust and constant "bombardment … by micrometeoroids".

"[The rings] must have formed as essentially pure ice," she said at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Science.

Just how these icy rings came about has always been a mystery.

"You would've expected that if an object, let's say an asteroid or even a satellite had broken up, there would be a large rock component," Carl Murray from Queen Mary, University of London, one the astronomers on the Cassini mission, told BBC News.

New idea

He explained that up until now, there were two main theories for the origin of the rings. One of them involved an icy comet breaking up in the Saturn's vicinity, and the other suggested that a small moon was pulled in by the planet's gravitational field.

"But you'd have to have a giant comet, several hundred kilometres across, and you'd have to have such comets passing Saturn frequently enough for [the planet] to disrupt one and form a ring system," said Professor Murray.

In the case of a satellite breaking up, "you'd probably expect the rings to be composed of rock and ice, so what happened to the rock?" he added.

Dr Canup said she disagreed with both theories.

"I here explore a new alternative," she said.

"As a large, Titan-sized satellite approached Saturn, it would likely be differentiated due to the combination of the energy of its formation and strong tidal heating."

Titan is the planet's largest satellite, and it is also the second largest moon in the Solar System after Jupiter's Ganymede.

Professor Murray said that the size of the satellite in Dr Canup's hypothesis was the main new idea, and it was a clever way to explain the peculiarly icy nature of the rings.

"Her theory says that yes, there was a satellite, but perhaps a lot bigger than people had thought - a Titan-sized object is of the order of 10 times the size of what people have been proposing before," he said.

"And that's the key difference."

Dr Canup said she believed that as this huge moon was about to hit Saturn, the planet's tidal forces could have "stripped" some of the moon's icy mantle before the collision.

This resulted in the formation of a massive, icy ring - and the moon's rocky core simply "fell" on to Saturn's surface.

With time, the ring's mass decreased, and icy moons were spawned from its outer edge, added Dr Canup.

The process could have led to the formation of such satellites as Enceladus, Dione and Tethys.

The Cassini mission is planned to continue until 2017 and astronomers hope that it will give them new data to check Dr Canup's theory.

A significant report on solar activity and climate change. From the BBC:

Solar surprise for climate issue

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

The Sun's influence on modern-day global warming may have been overestimated, a study suggests.

Scientists found unexpected patterns in solar output in the years 2004-2007, which challenge existing models.

However, they caution that three years of data are not enough to draw firm conclusions about long-term trends.

Writing in the journal Nature, they say it may become necessary to revise the way that solar influences are dealt with in computer models of the climate.

But, they add, the research does not challenge the role of humanity's production of greenhouse gases as the dominant long-term driver of modern-day climate change.

"What we can't really do at this stage is to extrapolate from this three-year period to any longer period - we can't even say that [what we've seen] has happened on previous solar cycles," said principal researcher Joanna Haigh from Imperial College London.

"If you could extrapolate... the climate models have been over-estimating the Sun's effect on temperature [rise]."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that humanity's emissions over the 20th Century were about 10 times more important as a driver of temperature rise then the slow upward trend in average solar output.

This new study does not change that basic picture, Professor Haigh said, despite the claims of some observers that solar factors have been underestimated as a cause of modern-day climate change.

"If the climate were affected in the long term, the Sun should have produced a notable cooling in the first half of the 20th Century, which we know it didn't," she said.

Violet variations

The Sun's output waxes and then wanes on an 11-year cycle.

This periodic 11-year fluctuation rides on top of a much longer-term trend - and for most of the 20th Century, that trend was upwards, leading to the net warming influence on the Earth's temperature that the IPCC documented.

One of the things that varies most during the solar cycle is the Sun's output of ultraviolet radiation.

It is hard to measure from the Earth's surface, as the atmosphere absorbs much of the UV energy - but satellites can do the job.

One of the more recent satellites studying the Sun is the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (Sorce), launched by Nasa in 2003, with data collected and collated at the University of Colorado in Boulder, US.

Instruments on board the satellite provide readings of how the Sun's total energy output is changing, and breaks that down into various components across the spectrum from infrared through visible light into the ultraviolet.

The first years of readings from Sorce, covering 2004-2007, co-incided with the waning phase of the last solar cycle.

Scientists expected to see a slight decline across the spectrum. Instead, they saw a distinct fall in UV output, but an increase in emissions at visible wavelengths.

The UV fall - about six times as big as anticipated - was consistent with changes in ozone concentrations observed with other satellites. Ultraviolet radiation produces ozone in the upper atmosphere.

While these ozone concentrations can affect weather and longer-term conditions at the Earth's surface, so can the unexpected increase in energy at visible wavelengths, which penetrates down through the atmosphere.

Putting these various factors together, Professor Haigh's team calculates that over this three-year period, solar influences produced a net warming - not the net cooling that previous observations and theory predicted.

Strange brew

The observations, and the analysis, appear to have raised more questions than they have answered.

Is something awry with the satellite readings? That is unlikely, given that the UV changes were seen with two of its instruments and that they are consistent with ozone measurements; but it cannot be ruled out.

The trade-off between UV and visible radiation has not been seen by previous satellites. Is that because Sorce is better, or because what it has turned up is specific to that one solar cycle?

It is possible, contended Mike Lockwood of Reading University, that there was something special about the last solar cycle - that it could mark the end of an extended phase of relatively high output, and the transition into a less active phase.

"If you look back... 9-10,000 years, you find oscillations of the Sun between 'grand maxima' and 'grand minima'," he said.

"It's now emerging that the 'space age' has been a grand maximum; so my view is that the Sun is due to fall out of this and into a 'grand minimum', so I would not be surprised if in 50 years' time we find ourselves in conditions like the 'Maunder Minimum' [of the late 17th and early 18th Centuries] associated with the 'Little Ice Age'."

Professor Lockwood was not involved in the Nature paper; but his research has shown that even though short-term changes in solar output may not affect the global big picture, they can have a powerful impact on local weather patterns, particularly over Europe and Eurasia.

"So we might have the ultimate paradox that in a globally warming world we'd have cold winters in Europe. But it would be an awful lot warmer in Greenland," he said.

Professor John Shepherd, who studies climatic change at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, added:

"The observations do show that solar radiation does some peculiar and interesting things, which will hopefully be revealed through future research.

"As with all other known solar effects since measurements began, these effects are subtle and tiny - certainly nowhere near enough to explain any of the climate changes that we observe."

The Sorce satellite, meanwhile, continues to assimilate readings, and these may in time shed light on whether these three years of observation have thrown up a facet of how the Sun behaves generally and so whether the models need to be re-written with a lower value for solar influences - or whether there was indeed something unusual about the solar cycle we have just witnessed.

And another bee story from the BBC:

Healthy hive training offered to novice beekeepers

Hundreds of volunteers in England and Wales are to be trained to teach amateur beekeepers how to keep their hives healthy over winter.

The decline in honeybees is prompting more people to take up beekeeping, but there are concerns that novices are not skilled at keeping their hives healthy.

Hives not kept free of disease are more likely to be lost during the winter.

The National Bee Unit said that last year 16% of colonies died over winter, compared to 14% the previous year.

Under the new project as part of the government's healthy bees plan, 400 part-time volunteers will be trained to take a number of steps in autumn and winter to ensure bee colonies survive cold weather.

The measures include checking for pests and treating the varroa mite which is a key problem for honeybee hives, checking the health of the queen bee, making sure the hive is waterproof and providing supplementary feeding if necessary.

The aim is for the volunteers to be trained to deliver courses to beekeepers through the British Beekeepers' Association's (BBKA) network of 160 local associations, using a "course in a case" full of training materials.

Environment minister Lord Henley said: "Bees are essential to putting food on our table and worth £200m to Britain every year through pollinating our crops.

"This training will help the many new beekeepers keep their hives healthy and bees buzzing."

Head of the National Bee Unit, Mike Brown, said: "More and more people are starting beekeeping, which is brilliant - it is a release from the pressures of modern life and helps the environment.

"But it should not be taken lightly, and it's best to find a mentor with practical experience as well as getting advice from us."

BBKA president Martin Smith said: "We look forward to working with the National Bee Unit to ensure that the band of new trainers have the high-quality teaching materials they need to be a viable support to our local associations, whose teaching and mentoring resources have become strained to breaking point."

Hhmmmmmmmm! Did anyone notice that last winter was a tad more severe than  the preceding one??
 
Though I'm genuinely thinking about taking up bee-keeping

Good for you, but just be aware that a few bee-keepers suffer from anaphylactic shock if they get stung. My parents' neighbour had to give up bee-keeping as a result.

A warning story from the BBC about wind farms:

Wind farms can affect local weather patterns

By Katia Moskvitch Science reporter, BBC News

Wind farms, especially big ones, generate turbulence that can significantly alter air temperatures near the ground, say researchers.

As turbines often stand on agricultural land, these changes could in turn affect crop productivity.

In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the team says the impact could be reduced by changing rotor design.

Another option would be to site farms in areas with high natural turbulence.

The world's very first wind farm was set up in southern New Hampshire, US, in 1980.

Almost a decade later, in 1989, a meteorological field study conducted on a wind farm in San Gorgonio, California, gathered temperature data over a period of almost two months.

This data formed the basis of the current study.

The team, led by Somnath Baidya Roy from the University of Illinois, analysed the information - seemingly, "the only meteorological field campaign conducted in an operational wind farm".

The scientists also conducted multiple computer simulations of a wind farm using a climate model called RAMS (Regional Atmospheric Modeling System).

The research showed that, depending on the natural air conditions, mixing the air with a turbine's rotor would either result in a warming or a cooling near the surface.

"This turbulence leads to a warming near the surface at night and a cooling during the day," Dr Roy told BBC News.

He added that the effects were in the range of ‐0.4 to 1.5C.

To reduce this turbulence effect and therefore the impact on the ground temperature, the authors suggest two possible solutions.

One is changing the rotors - possibly a rather expensive strategy, but, argue the scientists, "designing new rotors that generate less turbulence in their wakes also increases the productivity of wind farms".

And the second tactic would be moving the wind farm in question to a different site, with high natural turbulence.

Fossil fuels

But Jonathan Scurlock, chief adviser on climate change and renewable energy at the National Farmers Union, said that using wind energy was "one of many measures, which can be [used] to mitigate climate change".

"The major threats to agriculture in terms of changing the air temperature come directly from the fossil fuel industry and deforestation, increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere," he added.

"Farmers have got far more to fear from … well-known climatic processes driven by fossil fuel emissions than anything that is going to come as a consequence of deploying wind power."

But Dr Roy noted that even though wind farms were unlikely to have an effect on global climate change, "the impacts on local climate can be large".

He also said that the study was not about comparing wind power to any other technology, but about considering and addressing possible side effects of this green energy.

"Wind energy is likely to be a part of the solution of the global warming problem," he said.

"Often, in a rush to implement new technologies, we ignore possible side‐effects that may show up in the future.

"As a strong proponent of renewable energy, I am interested in making sure that the technology is properly implemented, [to ensure] long term sustainability of wind power by helping operators and utility companies to indentify impacts of wind farms on local weather and if necessary, take appropriate steps to mitigate these effects."

From the BBC:

Harmful algal blooms have the potential to lay waste to coral reefs.

Scientists studying coral reefs in the Gulf of Oman have issued the warning after being shocked by the impact of one large-scale bloom, which destroyed a coral reef in just three weeks.

Around 95% of the hard coral beneath the algae died off and 70% fewer fishes were observed in the area.

The rapidly growing patches of microscopic marine plants starve coral of sunlight and oxygen.

The toxic algae starves coral of light and oxygen

Coral reefs are increasingly under threat from environmental stress in the form of climate change, coastal development, overfishing, and pollution.

Climate change is suspected of causing a number of coral bleaching events, as rising sea temperatures stress coral communities.

But the latest study, published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, suggests that algal blooms could pose another significant threat.

Researchers from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health undertook studies of coral reef environments at two locations in the Gulf of Oman.

After their initial study, a large-scale algae bloom measuring over 500 square kilometres occurred in the area.

When the researchers returned three weeks later they found the coral beneath the bloom had been almost completely destroyed.

In one area, cauliflower (Pocillopora damicornis) and table top (Acropora arabensis) corals died off completely.

The sudden loss of the reef habitat had a knock on effect for the fish communities living there.

The researchers found an overall reduction of 70%, with 83% of the most abundant species severely reduced or completely eliminated from the survey site near Dibba.

The reef was rich in life before the algal bloom

Gulf parrotfish (Scarus persicus), pearly goatfish (Parupeneus margaritatus) and blackspot snapper (Lutjanus ehrenbergii) were among the affected species.

Analysis showed that hard corals were particularly vulnerable to the presence of the algae Cochlodinium polykrikoides.

"We were surprised at the extent and speed at which changes to the coral reef communities were affected," says marine ecologist Andrew Bauman.

In recent times, the increased occurrence of rapidly growing areas or 'blooms' of algae have been attributed to human activities.

Eutrophication, excess nutrients in coastal areas caused by run-off from agricultural fertilisers and human sewage, is often cited as the trigger for these phenomena.

CORAL BEHAVIOUR First pictures of a predatory coral eating jellyfish David Attenborough explains the diversity and sensitivity of coral reef habitats

Certain species of algae, referred to by scientists as harmful algal blooms, have adverse effects on marine ecosystems as they clog fish gills, reduce water quality and starve other species of oxygen.

The presence of large patches of algae close to the water's surface reduces the sunlight accessible to underwater plants for photosynthesis.

Although classed as animals, corals depend on a symbiotic relationship with microscopic marine plants (zooxanthellae) in their tissues for energy and oxygen.

When put under stress by changes in their environment, corals are known to expel their zooxanthellae.

SOURCES Visit the Marine Pollution Bulletin to learn more about harmful algal blooms

The photosynthetic algae give corals their colour, so after this expulsion only the white 'skeleton' remains. This is known as coral bleaching.

If the symbiotic algae does not return the coral dies, with fatal consequences for the fishes dependant upon it for food and shelter.

From the BBC:

Rich nations 'failing to deliver climate cash'

By Roger Harrabin Environment analyst, Tianjin, China

Rich nations are failing to live up to their promise of giving US$30bn to poor countries to help them cope with climate change, according to a report.

The money was pledged at last year's Copenhagen summit in order to build trust between rich and poor nations.

The scheme - championed by former UK PM Gordon Brown - is supposed to deliver the funds by the end of 2012.

But a report to the German government says much of the money has been taken from other aid budgets.

If the findings are correct, it confirms allegations by pressure groups that rich countries are repackaging existing funds and presenting them as special climate finance.

Campaigners claim programmes to tackle poverty will suffer if this is allowed to happen.

Cash transfer from rich to poor is a major theme at the Tianjin climate conference, the last major gathering before this year's UN climate summit in Mexico.

Delegates also heard an update about potential sources for the agreed $100bn long-term climate finance.

The report on the $30bn short-term cash is by the consultancy Climate Analytics. It says a total of $31.2bn has been pledged so far - more than the amount promised at the global gathering in the Danish capital last December.

Devil in detail

But the question is what counts as "new and additional finance". The term was used in the controversial Copenhagen Climate Accord, but has no agreed definition.

The paper concludes that if the only funds counted are new climate funds additional to official aid budgets since Copenhagen, then the sum raised so far is just $8.2bn.

A more generous definition of additional finance might see the allowable funds swelled to $17bn - but even this is far from the $30bn figure.

The report says there is very little transparency in rich countries' pledges.

The claim comes as rich nations are demanding transparency in developing nations' actions to tackle climate change.

"There must be much better verification of developed countries' finance proposals," Xie Zhenhua, China's chief climate negotiator, told BBC News.

Bill Hare from Climate Analytics said: "This is a really important issue because so much trust has been lost in the climate negotiations with so many rich nations failing to live up to their legally binding targets to cut emissions, then asking the developing nations to do more to tackle climate change.

"This fund will look like a scam if it's not improved. If you can't have trust - and this process has been severely damaged by lack of trust - it's going to be very bad news indeed."

John Drexage from the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) in Canada told BBC News: "We mustn't get too obsessed about this - if we are not careful a big chunk of the money will go in paying wealthy consultants from rich countries to find out how much money is new."

A former diplomat was more cynical about the "smoke and mirrors" of international finance: "Treasuries don't allow ministers to make spending pledges - they go into a side room and warn there is no new money available - then they get creative as to how to present a package that will look good on paper.

"There's a huge amount of grey area here - it's impossible to be precise on these figures."

Meanwhile, the meeting heard about progress from the high-level advisory panel tasked with finding the annual $100bn to be given by rich nations to poor nations from 2020.

This also formed part of the Copenhagen Accord from 2020, and the US$100bn was again first mooted by Gordon Brown, as a way to help poor countries cope with the projected consequences of climate change.

The panel's spokesman, Daniele Violetti, said the report would be finalised next week.

"The group is not proposing a 'silver bullet' for every problem - it's more a question of assessing what various revenues could generate over time," he said.

There could be eight sources of finance, most of them coming from the public sector.

It is reported that the panel has been considering bunker fuel taxes for aviation and shipping, but that a proposed Tobin tax (levy on currency traded across national borders) on financial transactions has been quashed by the US.

The panel's conclusions will be examined closely because the US and the UK both insist that public sector money will be used to leverage private sector investment - much of it from the carbon markets.

Henry Derwent, CEO of the International Emissions Trading Association, said governments might be over-estimating the cash that could be generated from markets.

"The current maximum primary market investment under the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism - the official international carbon trading market) is $2-3bn a year," he told BBC News.

"With the current trend in carbon prices, it doesn't seem to be going in the right direction to me - so it's hard to see how this could contribute a large proportion of $100bn."

The carbon market will burgeon if a comprehensive global deal on emissions is agreed - but observers in Tianjin are not optimistic that will happen in the next few years, if at all.

To accompany my posting earlier this week on the winners of the Nobel prize for physics, this is the BBC article on the winners of the prize for chemistry. It is extraordinary how both awards relate to work on carbon.

Molecule building work wins Nobel

Three scientists have shared this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing new ways of linking carbon atoms together.

The Nobel was awarded to Professors Richard Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki for innovative ways of developing complex molecules.

The chemical method developed by the researchers has allowed scientists to make medicines and better electronics.

The Nobels are valued at 10m Swedish kronor (£900,000; 1m euros; $1.5m).

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said this year's chemistry award honours the researchers' development of "palladium-catalysed cross couplings in organic systems".

The academy said it was a "precise and efficient" tool that is used by researchers worldwide, "as well as in the commercial production of for example pharmaceuticals and molecules used in the electronics industry".

Such chemicals included one found in small quantities in a sea sponge, which scientists aim to use to fight cancer cells. Researchers can now artificially produce this substance, called discodermolide.

Heck, 79, is a professor emeritus at the University of Delaware, US; Negishi, 75, is a chemistry professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and 80-year-old Suzuki is a professor at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan.

Professor Negishi told reporters in Stockholm by telephone that he was asleep when the call from the Nobel committee came.

'Essential tools'

"I went to bed last night well past midnight so I was sleeping but I am extremely happy to receive the telephone call," he said.

Organic chemistry has built on nature, utilising carbon's ability to provide a stable skeleton for functional molecules. This has paved the way for new medicines and improved materials.

To do this, chemists need to be able to join carbon atoms together, but carbon atoms do not easily react with one another.

The first methods used by chemists to bind carbon atoms together were based on making carbon more reactive.

This worked well for synthesising simple molecules, but when chemists tried to scale this up to more complex ones, too many unwanted by-products were generated.

The method based around the metal palladium solved that problem: in it, carbon atoms meet on a palladium atom, and their proximity to one another kick-starts the chemical reaction.

PM's call

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said he spoke to Professor Suzuki on the phone and congratulated him.

"He told me that Japan's science and technology is at the world's top level and encouraged me to make good use of the resources," he said.

Professor David Phillips, President of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said these metal-based "coupling" reactions had led to "countless breakthroughs".

He added: "The Heck, Negishi and Suzuki reactions make possible the vital fluorescent marking that underpins DNA sequencing, and are essential tools for synthetic chemists creating complex new drugs and polymers."

Russian-born Andre Geim, 51, and Konstantin Novoselov, 36, of the University of Manchester, UK, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for groundbreaking experiments with graphene, an ultra-thin and super-strong material.

The prizes also cover chemistry, medicine, literature, peace and economics.