The Complete Guide To: Cuba

With Fidel Castro stepping down, it's only a matter of time before the US embargo ends and the island is overrun by American tourists, says Simon Calder. So, if you want to go, go now......

A view of Ernest Hemingway's house Finca Vigia, in the outskirts of Havana

Cuba: Libre?

That all depends what exactly you mean by libre, or free. Certainly, in the 15 years since British holidaymakers started heading for Havana and beyond in significant numbers, more than one million of us have enjoyed the sense of liberation bestowed by travelling to a warm, welcoming and relaxed nation. We, of course, do not have to live there, and can enjoy free and easy travel around the Caribbean's largest and most beautiful island. Cuba combines natural beauty (in both her landscapes and her people) with a depth of culture unequalled elsewhere in the Caribbean.

In Cuba, summer and winter are barely discernable and, unless you are extremely unlucky, the weather will be hot and sunny throughout your visit. In the coolest months, from December to March, the average day hits an eminently tolerable high of 79F (26C), with six hours of sunshine. The sand is softer and whiter than snow, a broad, bright strand between a straggle of hotels and the Atlantic Ocean. The sea is improbably blue and calm, the power of the Gulf Stream tempered by a fringe of coral reefs. And for tourists who are seeking more prosaic rewards, Cuba has rum, cigars, and the best collection of 1950s American cars in the world. Indeed, you frequently sense that little has changed since the 1959 revolution swept Fidel Castro to power.

Now that the old dictator has found an alternative to "Socialism or Death", ie superannuation, plenty will change. As Castro retires, the world community is calling upon his brother and apparent heir, Raúl Castro, to reform the communist state where democracy is a sham and free speech is shackled. Within a year, I predict that the US embargo that stops Americans from vacationing in Cuba will end. Barack Obama has promised, if he wins the White House, to abolish the "Trading with the Enemy" rules that effectively ban US citizens from visiting Cuba. Once the brakes are off, you can expect Americans in their millions to be dancing in the calles of the de facto capital of the Caribbean. So, to enjoy the unique island in its entrancingly dilapidated condition, go now.

Fidel, Che Guevara and the rest of the revolutionaries started their struggle with the oppressive regime of Fulgencio Batista in the Sierra Maestra mountains of south-east Cuba. They won on New Year's Day 1959 – and since then Dr Castro has ruled the island with remarkable successes in the fields of health, education and not-being-bullied-by-the-US. His people, though, have had to endure severe economic privations and the absence of human rights, enforced by a highly efficient secret police force, modelled on the KGB, and supported by a web of Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, a kind of political Neighbourhood Watch scheme.

Sounds like a laugh a minute

Funnily enough, it is – at least for visitors. Despite occasional attempts to stop locals fraternising with tourists, you are likely to meet dozens of friendly, hospitable people who are immensely proud of their island despite the suppression of dissent and economic privations that they endure. Cuban culture has no equal: a blend of Spanish and West African blood, spiced up by numerous other nationalities, including some Chinese, and simmered for several centuries under the tropical sun to create everything from salsa to socialism. In this one-party state, life can seem like one long party – in spite of the Cuban Communist Party controlling much of day-to-day life.

An excellent place to witness this is Havana's Tropical club (also referred to as the Salon Rosada), an open-air nightspot in the Marianao district of the Cuban capital. It is open at weekends only, from around 9pm to midnight, but presents a far more realistic picture of the island than the nearby Tropicana, which hosted Sinatra before the revolution, and now appeals mainly to tourist groups and Party faithful. Instead, arrive at the Tropical in good time and be prepared to queue.

After salsa, sleep – but where in Havana?

If you feel nostalgic for the glory days of the revolution, head for the 23-storey Hotel Habana Libre (00 53 7834 6100; www.solmelia.com). This is the capital's leading landmark, and began life as the Hilton Hotel until the rebel leaders made it their headquarters after their triumph in 1959. A double room costs £146 including breakfast. If you prefer a taste of pre-revolutionary Cuba, try the Hotel Nacional, a national monument on the corner of Calle 0 and Calle 21 (00 53 7 836 3564; www.hotelnacionaldecuba.com). This stylish 1930s building, set in its own opulent gardens close to the sea, features in Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana, but is now the preserve of large tour groups. Through a tour operator such as Virgin Holidays (0870 990 4205; www.virginholidays.co.uk), a week's stay here, with breakfast, plus flights from London on Virgin Atlantic, costs £689, based on two sharing.

A specialist operator such as South American Experience (0845 277 3366; www.southamericanexperience.co.uk), though, is more likely to steer you to one of the new generation of hotels in former colonial mansions, run by the Habaguanex organisation which is connected to the city historian's office. Star properties include the Hotel Florida in the heart of Old Havana (00 53 7 862 4127; www.habaguanex.com). Rooms are arranged around a cool courtyard, dappled with light, and justify the £83 rate for a double room, including breakfast.

It's worth noting, however, that many of these old properties have some rooms with inward-facing windows, or no windows at all. Hotel del Tejadillo, another lovely little place just around the corner from the cathedral, for example has 32 rooms – but only nine have windows. The only real luxury option is the Hotel Saratoga (00 53 7 868 1000; www.hotel-saratoga.com) on the Paseo del Prado overlooking the Capitol building and with panoramic views from the stylish rooftop pool. Booking through a company such as hotelopia (www.hotelopia.co.uk) you can get a double room for as little as £125 including breakfast.

More cheaply, plenty of homes offer private rooms for foreigners for about £38 for a double including breakfast (dinner is often also available), but most of these are in Centro Habana; they are banned within Old Havana. Just look for signs saying casa particular.

Old Havana, an acorn-shaped huddle of homes and churches (plus a muddle of shops, hotels and restaurants in various states of decline) squeezed between the main square and the harbour, is by far the most pleasant area in which to stay. It is close to all the sights, the most significant of which is the Presidential Palace: not the heavily guarded headquarters of one or other of the Castro brothers, of course, but the residence of the dictator he deposed: Fulgencio Batista.

The palace on Prado, north of the main square, has become the Museum of the Revolution (00 53 7 862 4092; open 10am-5pm daily, admission roughly £2).

Upstairs, you find a curious contrast between the palatial interior (lots of Tiffany glass) and the minutiae of the revolution, labelled only in Spanish. Downstairs, in the Che Room, you can see the caskets that bore the remains of Ernesto Guevara and his comrades back from Bolivia, plus a lone sock that once belonged to the Argentine revolutionary.

Continue with a sweep through the deliciously decrepit churches and mansions of Old Havana, then hop aboard a "camel" – the humped and articulated buses that ferry Habañeros around the capital for 20 centavos (less than a penny) and take a look at the mural to Che on the otherwise bleak Plaza de la Revolució*.

Forget the Reds – I want a sun bed

Then head east to the superb strip of sand known as Varadero, about 200km from Havana. On the way, call in at the city of Matanzas, known unconvincingly as the Athens of Cuba. But besides a few neo-classical buildings, it has a wonderfully atmospheric main square. One highlight is the Liceo de Matanzas music school, a breathtaking 19th-century treat, the most notable modern feature of which is a huge mural of a chess-playing Che.

Varadero is squarely package-holiday territory, comprising mainly a string of all-inclusive resorts. The leading British tour operators offer good deals that include charter flights to Varadero's own airport. For example, Thomas Cook (0870 010 0437; www.thomascook.com) has a fortnight all-inclusive at the five-star Hotel Iberostar Varadero with flights from Manchester or Gatwick, for £765 per person based on two staying.

I want to see the 'real' Cuba

Then leave Varadero and explore. Bear in mind that Cuba is bigger than all the other Caribbean islands put together. It has the same area as England, but it is longer and thinner: around 1,200km long and up to 210km wide, shaped (if you use your imagination) like a lizard. Don't expect to get around the island with any haste. Cuba's roads are in a state of disrepair, which means that even the Viazul fleet of modern, air-conditioned buses (00 53 7 881 1413; www.viazul.cu) is likely to average 40mph or less. The railway network makes Britain's look a model of order and efficiency; if you arrive in roughly the right town on approximately the right date you can count yourself lucky.

You could rent a car – and Cubaism (0800 298 9555; www.havanacarhire.com) can fix you up with one for around u

o £250 for a week, picking up and dropping off at Havana airport – but be warned that night driving is not to be recommended. Hazards include potholes, vehicles with no lights, and wandering livestock. Added to that, one of the many things in short supply in Cuba is road signage.

You can easily pay up to 60 convertible pesos (CUC) (£32) a day for an economy vehicle on top of which you have to pay about 20 per cent for insurance. However, it does give you the freedom to explore at your own pace.

First, head south across the sleepy interior to the Bay of Pigs, where the Americans unsuccessfully tried to mount an invasion in 1961. There's the obligatory museum about the heroic defence of the island, and not a bad beach. The coast road unwinds to the port of Cienfuegos, on a fine, broad bay whose loveliness is marred only by a half-built nuclear power station.

A jewel in Fidel's crown?

Not the nuclear power station – but if you continue east for around 100km you reach Trinidad: the colonial gem of Cuba. Many of the town's streets are still cobbled, paved with the stone once used as ballast in the ships of early Spanish traders. This small and beautiful city has some of Cuba's best museums clustered around an exquisite main square, including one, the National Museum of the Struggle against the Insurgents, devoted to the battle against the counter-revolutionaries. The museum is on Calle Fernando Echerri (00 53 419 4121) and opens daily except Monday.

Temptingly close is Playa Ancon, one of the island's best beaches, lined with hotels that have greatly improved since Spanish hoteliers were brought in to spruce them up. Regent Holidays (0845 277 3317; www.regent-holidays.co.uk) organised the first packages from Britain to Cuba, and can fix you up with a visit to Trinidad as part of a 15-day tour, which also takes in Havana, Santa Clara, Camagüey, Santiago de Cuba and Baracoa, and costs around £800 including ground transportation, meals and accommodation but not international flights.

I want my Cuba raw, not refined

Then go further east to the island's grandest scenery. The Sierra Maestra, running along the south coast, is Cuba's highest mountain range with endless – and mainly unexploited – opportunities for trekking. The city of Santiago de Cuba is a smaller, more manageable and more three-dimensional version of Havana. And, at the extreme east, the port of Baracoa is The Town that Time Forgot, with the strongest concentration of the glorious decay that characterises the island. And to find out how Cuba got where it is today, you can see the places where Columbus arrived from Europe, and Che and Fidel arrived from Mexico to start the revolution in 1956.

Base yourself in Cuba's second city, Santiago, and visit the Moncada Barracks – the location of a failed first attempt to overthrow Batista. Fidel Castro was one of the survivors of the 1953 fiasco, and during his trial made his celebrated "history will absolve me" speech; the jury, though, is still out on that one. You can visit part of the barracks; the rest of it has been converted into a school.

The city has a number of good places to stay, including the dazzling Hotel Santiago de Cuba on Avenida de las Americas (00 53 226 87070; www.solmelia.com). Alternatively, the Hotel Rex – close to the Moncada Barracks – is notable as the place that the rebels dined the night before their doomed attack.

Will I eat well?

Possibly. The first independent guidebook to the island recommended: "If you want to lose weight, go to Cuba". Since it was published in 1990, however, things have improved immensely. In the all-inclusive resorts there's plenty of choice at meal times, some of it palatable. For independent travellers, the godsend is the paladar (a small, private restaurant) where you can get fresh, delicious meals for around £12. In Havana, La Cocina de Lilliam, at Calle 48 number 1311 (00 53 7 209 6514) started as a family-run enterprise and has developed into one of the most successful restaurants in the Cuban capital.

Another of international standing – and standards – is La Guarida at Calle Concordia 418 (00 53 7 866 9047; www.laguarida.com) in edgy Central Havana, and which had a starring role in the Oscar-nominated film Fresa y Chocolate. Some state-run restaurants are also improving, such as El Templete on Avenida Carlos Manuel de Cespedes (00 53 7 860 8280), a gourmet seafood restaurant on the harbourfront.

Am I going to enjoy the shopping?

Probably not. There are a couple of reasons why shopping in Cuba is less of a pleasure than it ought to be. First, in many of the ordinary shops hardly anything is on sale (though you may find some intriguing artefacts at the market stalls in Old Havana; a recent visitor tracked down a 1947 Clipper guidebook to Cuba, with an introduction by the president, Dr Ramon Grau San Martin). Next, in the unlikely event that you find something you'd like to buy, you have to battle with the confusion engendered by there being three conflicting currencies (see box).

If you have foreign exchange or a robust credit card, you will hardly be able to move without the offer of rum, cigars or, indeed, prostitutes of both genders. Cuban rum is one of the few of the island's products that have a world-class reputation (another being cigars). Younger, lighter rum is the type primarily used for cocktails. The ageing process is carried out in white oak barrels. Old Havana has a rum museum, the Museo del Ron (00 53 7 862 4108; www.havanaclubfoundation.com), located in an 18th-century palace and which opens daily 9am-5.30pm.

Take this plane to Cuba. but which one?

Ideally, one belonging to Virgin Atlantic (0871 984 0840; www.virgin-atlantic.com), which has flights from Gatwick to Havana each Sunday and Thursday.

Cubana, the national airline of Cuba (020-7538 5933; www.cubana.cu), flies the same route on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Cubana endured a dismal safety record in the latter part of the 20th century, but has not had a fatal crash since the end of 1999 (when it had two in a week).

From other airports, the main options are Air France and Iberia. Note that US-owned online travel agents such as Expedia and Travelocity are not allowed to sell tickets to Cuba.

Whichever plane you choose to Havana, you'll arrive at José Martí airport, on the south-west outskirts of the capital. (Like many things on the island, it is named after Cuba's 19th-century liberation fighter and national poet.) From here, a taxi into town costs around CUC25 (£13).

If you prefer someone else to do the organising, can choose from a wide range of tour operators, from the specialist Captivating Cuba (0844 412 9917; www.captivatingcuba.com) to adventure trips with Explore (0844 499 0901; www.explore.co.uk).

Any Red Tape?

You need a tourist card, which is issued as a matter of course by package holiday companies or specialist agents, who usually charge around £20. It can also be acquired from the Cuban Consulate in London (167 High Holborn, WC1V 6PA; 020-7240 2488; cuba.embassyhomepage.com). The tourist card is valid for 30 days, but can be extended in Cuba for a further 30 days.

If you are travelling independently and have no accommodation reservations, the immigration official may insist that you book a couple of nights at an expensive hotel before you're allowed through.

More information?

You can try the Cuba Tourist Board in London (020-7240 6655; www.cubatravel.cu), though you are more likely to get some sense out of the relevant Rough Guide or Lonely Planet's Cuba book.

Additional research by Lucy Gillmore and Beatrice Mancini

SPLASH OUT – BUT HOW?

The collapse of the Soviet Union in the Nineties forced the Cuban government to embrace foreign currency and make legal the acceptance of US dollars.

However, in a move said to be a response to the tightening of the American government embargo, US dollars are no longer freely accepted. Instead, tourists are expected to use the convertible peso (CUC), a currency that is unlikely to be recognised beyond the island.

Converting US dollars to CUCs attracts a 10 per cent surcharge: changing sterling (at a current rate of CUC1.80 to £1) or euros doesn't.

Some places, particularly those on the fringes of the official economy, still happily accept cash dollars, and a supply of $1 bills for tips is strongly recommended.

The local currency is the peso (CUP). Change about £10-worth when you arrive, and see how slowly you get through it; most of the tourist economy is based on "hard currency" transactions involving convertible pesos or euros, but you can spend ordinary pesos in some local cafes.

Credit card acceptance (as long as not issued by American banks) is getting wider, but is still not very extensive.

GO WEST

Pinar del Río, Cuba's westernmost province, is a rural backwater of sleepy towns, a patchwork of paddy fields, tobacco crops and sugarcane. The coast is pinpricked by a smattering of low-key resorts, and the autopista is empty apart from the odd 1950s Chevrolet and a lone cyclist or two. Even the mountain range that forms the backbone of the province, the Sierra del Rosario, is low-slung – the highest peak is just 700m. First stop is Las Terrazas, a reforestation and local community project. It was started in the late Sixties and is now an eco-resort. The French cut down all the native vegetation to clear the land for coffee plantations – and the Cubans replanted in terraces. They did it so well that Unesco declared the area a Biosphere Reserve in 1985 and the villagers had to find an alternative income: cue tourism. Activities include guided hikes in the valley, bathing in hot springs, and an exhilarating canopy tour. The colonial-style Moka hotel (www.hotelmoka-lasterrazas. com) has doubles for CUC110 (£61) including breakfast.

A couple of hours further along the autopista and you come to Vinales, which can also be done in a day trip from Havana. Out of the otherworldly valley rises a striking series of mogotes or flat-topped mountains. Rooms with a view can be had at La Ermita (00 53 48 79 6071) for CUC74 (£41), including breakfast.

At the end of the road is the Peninsula de Guanahacabibes. On one side the little diving resort of Maria la Gorda (Fat Maria), on the other, 77km away down a dirt track, is barefoot luxury at its best at Villa Cabo San Antonio, which has eight log cabins and a seemingly endless palm-backed beach. Both properties are owned by the Gaviota group (00 53 48 778131; www.gaviota-grupo.com).

The coral reef off Maria la Gorda is regarded as one of the best dive sites in Cuba. An introductory dive costs CUC45 (£25). Doubles at Cabo San Antonio cost CUC76 (£42) with breakfast and at Maria la Gorda CUC68 (£38) with breakfast.

Interesting? Click here to explore further

Who owns today?

By Steve Tomkins

It comes but once every four years and this 29 February some workers are being given the extra day as holiday. Employers won't like the idea, but we tend to look at additional time as a gift.

Imagine that to adjust our timekeeping, 10 minutes had to be added to one day each year. You would expect them to be 10 minutes of free time, yours to spend as you will. You'd be miffed if they were added to one of your working hours, getting 10 minutes more work out of you for no extra money.

But is this what leap year does to us? If you're on an annual salary, you will get the same pay as normal this year, while working one extra day. Is 29 February just another working Friday, or a sneaky bonus for your employer? Who does 29 February belong to?

He gets the day off

If you're starting to feel like a holiday today, you might be interested to hear that the National Trust has granted its whole workforce the day off. Calling it the Great Green Leap Day, they are asking staff to use it for the environment. "We're giving them this opportunity to look at steps to green their own lives at home," explains Mike Holland of the Trust. "Anything from converting to greener energy to starting a compost heap."

Just how many will be converting, composting and otherwise greening and how many will be shopping is hard to say, but Holland hopes most of the workforce have caught the vision. He says it would be good to see other workplaces catch it, so if you can just wait till 2012 there might be one for you too.

The National Trust does not want anyone to feel short-changed by their own employer. But if you do feel that way, then according to Steve Taylor, the author of Making Time: Why Time Seems to Pass at Different Speeds and How to Control It, there may be something in it.

Time as a 'gift'

The book argues that the way we perceive time is more real than the way we measure it. How else does time pass, except in our consciousness - sometimes faster, sometimes slower? When it comes to the extra day, like the extra hour when the clocks go back, he says, "We look on that time as a gift - just as in other ways we try to subtract time, like when we're on a long journey and immerse attention in a book".

'LEAP YEARS' THAT WEREN'T Every fourth year is a leap year, unless it is divisible by 100 and not by 400 So 2000 was a leap year, as was, for those who can't remember it, 1600 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not leap years The next such non-leap year is 2100

Perhaps, he agrees, employers may be getting an extra unpaid day out of us. "But then in a sense," he adds, "they own us already. We give half our waking hours to them, voluntarily, and our time is our lives - we're literally giving ourselves away." A thought which makes you want to hold on to any disputed days tighter than ever.

Where did this extra day come from in the first place? We need the leap day because of the deplorable untidiness of our solar system. One of our earth years (a complete orbit around the sun) does not take an exact number of whole days (one complete spin of the earth on its axis). In fact, it takes 365.2422 days, give or take.

The leap year was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46BC, to make the calendar tidier. The extra day every fourth year made the average year 365.25 days long.

Time stealer

This was still about 12 minutes longer than the solar year, which you can get away with on the short term, but in 1267 a monk called Roger Bacon noticed that the calendar had slipped nine days in the 13 intervening centuries.

Gregory XIII: Said to have provoked protests after 'stealing' 10 days

It then took the church until 1582 to accept that it was celebrating Easter on the wrong week. That year Pope Gregory XIII adjusted the calendar, introducing the system we go by today: every fourth year is a leap year, unless it is divisible by 100 and not by 400. This makes the year 365.2425 days, which is still a little under 26 seconds too long, but nothing to fret about.

As a one off, Gregory's reform also skipped the 10 days they had gained since Caesar's time, jumping from 4 to 15 October 1582. It is said that this provoked demonstrations from people demanding their stolen days back.

So how about demos today, to reclaim the working day pinched from employees by their employers? Go for it, brothers and sisters, but the TUC will not be organising it.

A spokesperson says: "Salaried workers usually receive their annual salary in twelve monthly payments and know when they accept a job that some months are longer than others and that leap years come round once every so often. Indeed, leap years have been with us 1582, so the UK workforce has had a while to get used to the idea of an extra day every four years."

OK, off you go then, back to work.

Dave Clark Five singer Smith dies

The group, with Smith (front), were among the top UK acts of the 1960s

Mike Smith, the lead singer of 1960s British pop group The Dave Clark Five, has died at the age of 64.

He died from pneumonia at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, his US agent Margo Lewis confirmed.

This was a result of complications from a spinal cord injury sustained in 2003 which left him paralysed from the waist down, she added.

The Dave Clark Five had 19 UK Top 40 hits, including Bits and Pieces and the number one single Glad All Over.

The group are due to be inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York on 10 March, alongside acts including Madonna, John Mellencamp and Leonard Cohen.

I am incredibly saddened to lose him, his energy and his humour Margo Lewis, Smith's US agent

Ms Lewis said the singer and keyboardist was admitted to the hospital's intensive care unit on Wednesday with a chest infection.

He had been in hospital since September 2003, but was released last December to live with his wife in a specially-prepared home nearby.

Ms Lewis said: "I am incredibly saddened to lose him, his energy and his humour.

"But I am comforted by the fact that he had the chance to spend his final months and days at home with his loving wife, Charlie, whom he adored, instead of in the hospital, and that he was able to attend a recent concert in London by his good friend, Bruce Springsteen."

Smith, pictured right, and his bandmates stormed the US charts

She said Smith had felt honoured at the band's Hall of Fame induction.

"I am glad that he will be remembered as a 'Hall of Famer', because he was in so many ways," she added.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame president Joel Peresman told Associated Press he was saddened by the news, but that the ceremony would go ahead as planned, with "a little extra significance".

'British invasion'

The band, which broke up in the 1970s, sold more than 100 million records and recorded 23 albums, many of them for the US market.

They were part of the so-called 1960s British invasion of the US, as the Beatles, Rolling Stones and The Animals stormed the American charts.

The Dave Clark Five had US hits with Because, I Like it Like That and Glad All Over, and set a record among British acts after appearing on the Ed Sullivan show 13 times.

Bandmate Denis Payton, who played saxophone, harmonica and guitar, died of cancer in 2006.

The rest of the band were drummer Dave Clark, lead guitarist Lenny Davidson and Rick Huxley on bass.

No impact from Energy Saving Day

E-Day aimed to raise awareness on energy saving and climate

The UK's first Energy Saving Day has ended with no noticeable reduction in the country's electricity usage.

E-Day asked people to switch off electrical devices they did not need over a period of 24 hours, with the National Grid monitoring consumption.

It found that electricity usage was almost exactly what would have been expected without E-Day.

Colder weather than forecast in some regions may have led to higher use of heating, masking any small savings.

The event also received very little publicity, despite having backing from campaign groups such as Greenpeace, Christian Aid and the RSPB, and from major energy companies such as EDF, E.On and Scottish Power.

E-Day did not succeed in cutting the UK's electricity demand Dr Matt Prescott How to predict electricity use

"I am afraid that E-Day did not achieve the scale of public awareness or participation needed to have a measurable effect," said E-Day's organiser Dr Matt Prescott in a message on his website.

The Grid's final figures showed national electricity consumption for the 24 hours (from 1800 Wednesday to 1800 Thursday) was 0.1% above the "business-as-usual" projection.

Lofty aims

The E-Day concept started life as Planet Relief, an awareness-raising BBC TV programme with a significant comedy element.

But in September the BBC decided to pull the project, saying viewers preferred factual or documentary programmes about climate change.

E-DAY ELECTRICITY METER

Actual consumption:

MWh

Usual consumption:

MWh

SOURCE: e-day.org.uk

About these figures

This data is supplied by the National Grid, via E-Day. It is updated every 30 minutes during the 24 hours of E-Day.

Actual consumption shows the energy used so far during the 24 hours; Usual consumption is what the National Grid predicted under "business as usual".

The decision came after poor audiences for Live Earth, and public debate over whether it was the corporation's role to "save the planet".

Dr Prescott then decided to see whether he could mount E-Day as an independent operation, and secured the backing of important partners such as the National Grid and the UK's major energy companies.

They are obliged by the government to offer customers ways of improving energy efficiency, and some used E-Day to contact people interested in loft and wall insulation.

The event was launched on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral in central London by Dr Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, who described climate change as a "moral issue".

"Let us remember people in the Ganges delta who are already feeling the effects of sea level rise and climate change," he said.

"The science changes year by year - though rarely in the right direction - but the moral imperative remains the same."

Lessons learned

Bikes were pedalled to power a cinema at the launch event

Dr Prescott had hoped E-Day might bring a small but measurable reduction in electricity use, perhaps in the order of 2-3%, equivalent to the output of one or two fossil fuel fired power stations.

The idea was to demonstrate that numerous small personal actions could make a dent in greenhouse gas emissions.

But, he acknowledged on his website: "E-Day did not succeed in cutting the UK's electricity demand.

"The drop in temperature between Wednesay 27 February and Thursday 28 February probably caused this, as a result of more lights and heating being left on than were originally predicted."

"I will do my best to learn the relevant lessons for next time."

Italian police bust fake Ferrari racket

A confiscated fake Ferrari. Photograph: AP

There has long been a market for fake Rolex watches, Prada bags and Louis Vuitton luggage. But how about a Ferrari for less than the price of a Ford Focus?

Police on Sicily have broken up a counterfeiting business with a difference. It was selling copies of the world's most dashing car - outwardly perfect, down to the prancing horse emblem on the bonnet - for as little as €20,000 (£15,300).

In raids as far afield as Asti in the north-west of Italy, revenue guards impounded seven finished "Ferraris" and another seven at various stages of construction. Fifteen people were charged with offences including criminal conspiracy, fraud, counterfeiting and handling stolen goods.

Francesco Carofiglio, the revenue guard commander in the province of Palermo, said the operation "was aimed at fantasists, because it is more likely a true fan would turn to the real product".

The buyers appeared to have known they were acquiring a fake, even though the log book they got described the vehicle as a "modified Ferrari". The prosecutors who oversaw the operation are considering whether the buyers too should face charges.

General Carofiglio acknowledged the gang had enabled its customers to "realise the dreams of a lifetime with very little money".

But he warned that "to drive around in this sort of vehicle is dangerous - and not just for the driver, but also for the public. These were not reliable cars."

Most were based on the chassis of a Pontiac, though Mercedes and Toyotas were also cannibalised. None of the engines was made by Ferrari, but the gang used internet hobbyists' sites to accumulate visible parts that were genuine. These included dashboards, steering wheels and, of course, the Big Red's distinctive black and yellow badge.

What most impressed investigators was the quality of the workmanship that went into shaping the fibreglass bodywork so that the cars looked authentic. One said it was evidence of extraordinary ability.

The finished vehicles were sold over the internet for up to €50,000. How many were bought remains unknown.

In a garage at Licata on the south coast of Sicily, investigators found a fake Modena 360 all ready for sale at €20,000. The car went out of production four years ago in Italy, but a 2004 model currently sells for around €100,000.

'Frog from hell' fossil unearthed

Artist's impression of the "frog from hell" Enlarge Image

A 70-million-year-old fossil of a giant frog has been unearthed in Madagascar by a team of UK and US scientists.

The creature would have been the size of a "squashed beach ball" and weighed about 4kg (9lb), the researchers said.

They added that the fossil, nicknamed Beelzebufo or "frog from hell", was "strikingly different" from present-day frogs found on the island nation.

Details of the discovery are reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The team from University College London (UCL) and Stony Brook University, New York, said the frog would have had a body length of about 40cm (16 inches), and was among the largest of its kind to be found.

"This frog, a relative of today's horned toads, would have been the size of a slightly squashed beach-ball, with short legs and a big mouth," explained co-author Susan Evans, from UCL's Department of Cell and Developmental Biology.

"If it shared the aggressive temperament and 'sit-and-wait' ambush tactics of [present-day] horned toads, it would have been a formidable predator on small animals.

"Its diet would most likely have consisted of insects and small vertebrates like lizards, but it's not impossible that Beelzebufo might even have munched on hatchling or juvenile dinosaurs."

The researchers added that the discovery of the fossil supported the theory that Madagascar and the Indian and South American land masses could have been linked until the Late Cretaceous Period (75-65 million years ago).

"Our discovery of a frog strikingly different from today's Madagascan frogs, and akin to the horned toads previously considered endemic to South America, lends weight to the controversial model," Professor Evans explained.

'Hacker' launches iTunes copying

The software will allow the sharing of music bought on iTunes

The release of software from a firm run by a notorious Norwegian hacker is likely to cause waves in the music and film download world.

Jon Lech Johansen became the "enfant terrible" of the DRM industry when he released software which cracked the encryption codes on DVDs, aged just 15.

His firm, DoubleTwist, has now released software allowing users to share digital media files across devices.

It would allow songs bought on Apple's iTunes to be shared on other devices.

At the moment, the only portable music player which can store content downloaded from the iTunes store is Apple's iPod.

Users can copy downloaded songs to a CD and then copy the disc back on to the computer so that the songs can then be moved to other portable devices - but the quality of the music is affected.

In 2003 Mr Johansen distributed a program which bypassed Apple's Fairplay system, the software that enforces this relationship between iTunes and the iPod. Since then he has had several other well-publicised run-ins with the firm.

Tower of Babel

The new software from his San Francisco-based company DoubleTwist will allow users to share both user-generated and professionally created music, photos and video clips between computers, mobiles and game consoles.

Media which lives on a computer can be moved to a variety of mobile devices by dragging and dropping the files to a desktop folder which then drops copies on the external device over the web.

Initially the system will allow file-sharing with Sony's PSP games console, Nokia's N-series mobile, Sony Ericsson's Walkman and Cybershot handsets and Microsoft's Windows Mobile smartphones.

The software converts media stored in one file format to those used by the other devices in a system that mimics the process of ripping a CD onto a computer.

One hundred songs can be converted in about half an hour, with a slight degradation in sound quality, according to the firm.

"With digital media such as video from a friend's cell phone or your own iTunes playlists, it's a jungle out there," said Monique Farantzos, co-founder of DoubleTwist.

"The digital media landscape has become a tower of Babel, alienating and frustrating consumers. Our goal is to provide a simple and well integrated solution that the average consumer can use to eliminate the headaches associated with their expanding digital universe," she said.

The company is confident there will not be any legal challenges from Apple.

"All we are facilitating are friends sending things to one another," Ms Farantzos told the Reuters news agency.

The software is available as a free download from the company's website.

First stars 'may have been dark'

The "dark" stars may have been large and diffuse

The first stars to appear in the Universe may have been powered by dark matter, according to US scientists.

Normal stars are powered by nuclear fusion reactions, where hydrogen atoms meld to form heavier helium.

But when the Universe was still young, there would have been abundant dark matter, made of particles called Wimps: Weakly Interacting Massive Particles.

These would have fused together and obliterated each other long before nuclear fusion had the chance to start.

As a result, the first stars would have looked quite different from the ones we see today, and they may have changed the course of the Universe's evolution - or at least held it up.

The theory, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, depends on particles that astronomers can't see, but are certain exist, and physicists have never detected. But the indirect evidence for their existence is overwhelming.

"Dark matter particles make up more than three-quarters of the mass of the Universe," says theoretical physicist Katherine Freese from the University of Michigan.

"In fact, billions of them are passing through each of us every second."

In the early Universe, there would have been even more.

Changing course

The nature of the first stars has long puzzled astronomers. Immediately after the Big Bang, the Universe expanded and cooled, so that for millions of years it was filled with dark, featureless hydrogen and helium - and perhaps Wimps.

Astronomers can see that there were normal stars 700 million years after the Big Bang - the Hubble Telescope looking to the edges of the Universe, which is like looking back billions of years in time, can see whole galaxies of them.

JWST could see back to the first stars

But how did the Universe change course?

The leading theory is that gravity pulled balls of dark matter and hydrogen together.

"These 'haloes', as we call them, are about a million times as massive as the Sun, and the first stars formed inside their centres," Professor Freese told the BBC.

It had been thought the hydrogen brought together by these dark matter haloes would collapse to make the first small stars, and would start to make inside themselves the first new elements - carbon, oxygen, silicon and other materials needed by planets and life.

But the new paper says reactions between the Wimps, colliding and annihilating each other, would have generated enough heat to keep the protostars inflated - like hot air balloons. And as more Wimps rained down on them the heating would have kept going.

These giant, diffuse stars could have filled the orbit of the Earth.

The details of what the stars would have looked like have yet to be worked out. But in five years' time, Nasa will be launching its James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, and that might be able see right back to these "dark" stars.

There is also the intriguing possibility, says Professor Freese, that in some corner of our local Universe, there may be a few survivors lurking unnoticed.

Russia revolutionises its jet industry

Russia was a world leader in fighter jets, but its technology is aging

Russia is hoping to make a giant come-back in civil and military aviation.

It has pledged to spend billions of dollars on boosting its defence industry, especially the air force.

The goal is to build nearly 6,000 new military and civilian aircraft, and to win 15% of the global aviation market.

Russia has set up a new government-controlled company to oversee the process, the United Aircraft Corporation.

But there's a long way to go, as Russia's aircraft industry has been in the doldrums since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

New orders

President Vladimir Putin recently described Russia's aviation and space industry as "the pride of our country".

Can you tell me which country is not re-arming now? Oleg Federov, Sukhoi commercial director View from the stock exchange Russian inflation bites Gazprom flexes its muscles

His government is in the process of re-organising much of the industry, which used to be made up of many separate firms such as the commercial aircraft maker Tupolev, Sukhoi and Mikoyan-Gurevich, which made Russia's famous fighter jets.

Now they are all part of the new state-controlled United Aircraft Corporation.

And that's a good thing, according to Sukhoi's commercial director, Oleg Federov.

"We've already received new orders for military fighters and for our civil products, and we are overloaded until 2015," he says.

"It's good for jobs, it's good for our workshops, it's good for the future."

Old planes

Mr Federov's company may be busy, but there remains a lot of catching up to do.

Russia has money and the government is ready to invest because it expects a return on that investment Oleg Pantaleev, aviation expert

Oleg Pantaleev, one of Russia's leading aviation experts and the editor of the website Aviaport, admits that large parts of the industry remain out-dated and inefficient.

"The problem is that there are so many old models created in the 1980s and 1990s," he says.

"They are not comparable with Western aircraft because they use a lot more fuel. On the other hand, they are cheaper - maybe 20% or 30% cheaper than the Western planes."

Mr Pantaleev believes that ultimately the United Aircraft Corporation will be successful, but not within the tight deadlines that the government has set the company.

"Russia has money and the government is ready to invest because it expects a return on that investment," he says.

New weapons

Critics have regarded Russia's new arms build up with suspicion, but the Kremlin's supporters insist it's not a threat.

Critics say Russia's rush to re-arm is a reminder of previous times

"Why shouldn't Russia build up its defence if everybody else does?," says professor Alexei Pushkov, a political commentator and the presenter of a well-known Russian current affairs television programme, Post Scriptum.

Mr Pushkov points to the US military budget, which dwarfs that of Russia.

"Everybody in the West talks about Russia re-arming itself and are hardly noticing what's going on on the other side of the ocean," he says.

"Russia is a huge country, it has to defend its borders. We have a border of 4,500km with China, so Russia has to build up its military. This right should be recognised."

'Not enemies'

President Putin recently warned that Nato and the West were provoking Russia into a new arms race.

Russia hopes to build new aircraft which could rival the likes of Boeing

So, is that a sign that the chilly relations with the West are turning into a new Cold War?

Not according to Sukhoi's Mr Federov.

"Russia and the US are not enemies, we have normal relations," he says.

"Can you tell me which country is not re-arming now? I think it's not just a question of Russia, or the US, or Great Britain. The government of each country is responsible for updating and providing new technology within the military."

President Putin wants the United Aircraft Corporation to become what he calls "a national champion", a major company which will develop into an important international player.

But a good deal more hard work and investment are required before it can begin to be taken seriously as a rival to European and American companies such as Airbus and Boeing.

First look at vast 'book of life'

The encyclopedia is scheduled for completion in 2017

The first 30,000 pages have been unveiled of a vast encyclopedia which aims to catalogue every one of our planet's 1.8 million species.

The immense online resource is designed to greatly enhance our understanding of the world's diminishing biodiversity.

The creators of the database say it could have an impact on human knowledge comparable to that which followed the microscope's invention in the 1600s.

It is designed to be used by everyone from scientists to lay readers.

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) - described as the "ultimate field guide" - is to encompass all six kingdoms of life, and even viruses - which many researchers do not consider to be living organisms.

We think it is important to serve information on organisms that are doing okay, but also those that have been recently extinct James Edwards, Encyclopedia of Life

Those behind the sprawling database say it could help scientists assess the impact of climate change on animals and plants. It may also help foster strategies for slowing the spread of invasive species and allow the spread of disease to be tracked.

Another stated aim is to raise consciousness of biodiversity at a time when our planet is said to be in the midst of a sixth mass extinction.

The immense amount of information in the encyclopedia is being drawn from a variety of sources, including several existing specialist databases such as AmphibiaWeb and FishBase.

"The thing that makes the encyclopedia possible now, when it would not have been possible five years ago, is that there are many online resources that have been developed which we can draw upon," Dr James Edwards, executive director of the Encyclopedia of Life, told BBC News.

"Secondly, information technology has reached a point where you can pool bits of information from different sources and present them in the way that, for example, Google News does... we're using the same kind of approach."

Vast resource

Those sources which provide information to the encyclopedia do so for free, with the aim of driving new users to their websites for additional, subscription-based information.

"If someone were to sit down and start writing, from scratch, an encyclopedia of life, it would take them about 100 years to complete. But we think we'll be able to do it in one-tenth of that time," explained Dr Edwards.

All known species including the zorilla will be included Enlarge Image

The project began in spring 2007. The encyclopedia now has placeholder pages for one million species, of which 30,000 have been populated with detailed information. There are also about a dozen highly developed multimedia pages giving a taster of what to expect in time from the EOL.

All 1.8 million entries are due to be complete by 2017.

"On every page, there is information provided by the World Conservation Union on [a species'] status, showing if it is threatened, endangered or extinct," said Dr Edwards, "We think it is important to serve information on organisms that are doing okay, but also those that have been recently extinct."

The encyclopedia's creators also aim to get information online as soon as possible when new species are identified. The project will solicit the help of users to submit photos and information for assessment by an authentication team.

Although the idea of a catalogue of life has been around for some time, this particular version can trace its origins to an article written in 1993 by the celebrated Harvard University biologist Edward O Wilson.

In it he argued that the biological sciences needed the equivalent of a "Moon shot".

In 2006, Wilson wrote a letter to the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation outlining his idea, which helped secure preliminary funding for the project.

Adobe fuses on and offline worlds

Air was code-named "apollo" during its development Shopping offline

Adobe has launched software designed to make it easier for computer users to use online applications offline.

Adobe Air allows developers to build tools that still have some functionality even when a computer is no longer connected to the net.

A free download will allow users of Macs, PCs and, later this year, Linux machines to run any Air applications.

The first programs that use the technology, developed by web sites such as eBay, have already been released.

"Air is going to allow applications that run on the web today - that run in the browser - to be brought down to the desktop," Andrew Shorten, platform evangelist at Adobe told BBC News.

"It's about taking existing web applications and adding extra functionality whether you want to work offline or whether you want to access data on your disk."

Seamless vision

Mr Shorten said that the technology is not about replacing the web browser.

Many firms have already developed Air applications

"It's about delivering the best experience depending on where you are and what you need to get from the application, " he said.

"If I'm on the road with my laptop maybe I want to use the desktop version of my application. If I pop into an internet cafe I can still access it through the browser."

The software is part of a growing number of technologies that aim to make the transition between the on and offline worlds seamless.

In 2006, Microsoft unveiled its Silverlight technology. And last year Google launched Gears.

The tool does not allow the creation of new content but does allow web applications to be used offline.

For example, the developers of the free online office package Zoho use Gears to give users similar functionality to normal desktop office programs.

The nice thing about it is that it works on all the different platforms John O'Donovan BBC

Similarly, Adobe is looking into provide Air versions of many of its popular programs such as Photoshop.

A host of other companies and web services have already built Air applications.

For example, Ebay has built a program that allows users to do much of the legwork required in setting up auctions offline. The next time the user connects to the internet the listing would be posted to the website.

The application also allows users to keep up to date with auctions and bids without the need to have a browser open at the eBay page.

Blurred boundary

The BBC is also building prototype applications with AIR.

"The nice thing about it is that it works on all the different platforms - Mac, PC and eventually Linux," said John O'Donovan, chief architect in the BBC's Future Media and Technology Journalism division.

The corporation is currently building prototype versions of several applications such as the news ticker, which displays headlines on a desktop, and mini Motty, which provides desktop football commentary.

The current versions of the programs only work on PCs.

Other programs exploit Air's ability to access both web content and files on a computer's disk.

For example, the web-version of Finetunes allows users to stream music over the internet

"If you install the Air version on your desktop it can also look at what you have in your iTunes library and then suggest music based on what it finds," explained Mr Shorten.

"So it's really taking the essence of what works on the web, brining it to the desktop and then making it more personal to you."

Some commentators have pointed out that the ability for an application to delve between the web and a computer's hard drive raises security implications.

"Our advice would be to only install applications from sources that you trust," said Mr Shorten.

Climate secrets of marine snail

The pteropod is an important food for many marine animals Enlarge Image

It is one of the world's strangest and smallest sea creatures, growing to no bigger than the size of a lentil.

But the tiny pteropod, with its translucent shell, could help scientists understand how marine animals will respond to the stresses of climate change.

Thousands of the molluscs, also known as sea butterflies because of their wing-like lobes, have been collected from the shallows of Antarctica.

After flying the samples thousands of kilometres to her laboratory at the University of California, Santa Barbara, marine biologist Dr Gretchen Hofmann plans to sequence the animal's genome.

She hopes to find genes and molecular pathways that might predict how shelled creatures will respond to warmer, more acidic oceans.

"They're a shelled organism, they make a shell just like a mussel or an oyster does," she explains.

Two Californian scientists collected the invertebrates in Antarctica

"It's a tiny, very fragile shell and we know that their ability to survive and form this shell is very threatened by climate change conditions in the ocean, a situation that's called ocean acidification."

Some of the carbon dioxide released from fossil fuels ends up in the oceans, where it combines with water to form carbonic acid.

As the ocean absorbs the excess carbon dioxide, its alkalinity drops. Research suggests that as seawater becomes more acidic, the calcium carbonate shells of pteropods become thinner and may eventually disappear.

Emission scenarios

Since the shell helps protect the creature from predators, it is unclear whether it will be able to survive.

PTEROPOD - SEA BUTTERFLY Marine snail that floats and swims Plentiful in polar seas The original 'foot' has developed into 'wings'

"Currently, ocean pH is about 8.1, and some of the emission scenarios suggest that ocean pHs could go down to 7.8, which is very drastic if you're a little pteropod living out on the ocean," says Dr Hofmann.

She says the changed pH of the ocean threatens the marine snail's ability to pull building blocks for their shells out of the seawater.

"It's not the kind of a condition that animals can escape from; they can't migrate to get away from a global ocean that has a different pH, so it's a dire situation," she says.

"For the pteropods, we know from the work being done by climate change biologists that polar seas, the Arctic and the Antarctic, will experience very acidic oceans first, so there are some models and some estimates that say by the year 2050 it may be that conditions are such that pteropods will no longer be able to make shells in the Southern Ocean."

Food web

Given their role in marine communities as fodder for the likes of penguins, salmon and whales, the threat to pteropods could have far-reaching effects.

"They're incredibly important sources of food for fish," says Dr Hofmann. "At times, I've heard fishery biologists calling them the potato chips of the oceans."

Dr Hofmann's laboratory is using sea urchins as a model for studying how shelled organisms might adapt to climate change.

The sea urchin may fare better in lower pH waters Spiny creature's DNA insight

Like the pteropod, the sea urchin has a calcium carbonate shell. Unlike the pteropod, however, its genome has already been mapped, giving scientists a variety of molecular tools to study how genes are switched on and off during the shell-making process.

In the laboratory, scientists recreate a future atmosphere that has all the components of today's air, but three times higher CO2.

"We're using the IPCC emission scenarios for C02 as a framework to test these outcomes," says Dr Hofmann.

Their research has shown that sea urchins can make a skeleton at very high C02 levels by "turning up the volume" of certain genes by three to four times.

But this has an energetic cost to the animal, and they become more sensitive to temperature.

Genetic clues

Dr Hofmann and Victoria Fabry of the California State University, San Marcos, aim to carry out similar studies on pteropods.

One of the things we know about climate change is that it's a double jeopardy situation - not only do we have a more acidic ocean, we know the sea is going to warm Dr Gretchen Hofmann

They plan to extract DNA from the organism and use a new high-throughput sequencing method to study its genetic make-up.

The DNA is a "roadmap" for looking at the code for all the enzymes and other proteins that the body makes, Dr Hofmann says.

"If we know the DNA sequence, we have the 'secret decoder ring' to ask what genes are going off and on in this animal as it responds to the conditions around it in the ocean," she explains.

The scientists are interested in two categories of genes in calcifying animals - those involved in making the calcium carbonate shell itself and a suite of genes that respond to high temperature stress.

These "special defence genes" protect the cell from damage when temperatures rise, and are present even in mammals, functioning to rescue the body during a fever, for example.

"One of the things we know about climate change is that it's a double jeopardy situation," adds Dr Hofmann.

"We have warming and acidifying seas that will impact these animals. Our experiments are trying to help us predict what future oceans will mean for current organisms."

New search powers lead Firefox 3

Firefox 3 is codenamed 'Gran Paradiso'

The latest version of web browser Firefox will make changes to the way people search for information online, says its developer.

Mozilla has told the BBC's World Service that the new browser has been designed around the importance of search to users.

Firefox 3, currently going through its third stage of beta testing, will offer a combined search and bookmark tool via the url bar.

It will also allow offline working.

Chairman of the Mozilla Foundation Mitchell Baker told BBC World Service's Digital Planet programme:

"It's clear that when people are looking for information on the web, search is the number one activity," she said.

"We've devised ways to bring that power into areas that are closer to your individual life."

'Faster, sleeker'

Typing "cameras", for example, into the url bar, will bring up a list of the sites that the user recently visited that have cameras in their names.

"If you buy shoes, that's all you need to remember - we will use search, as you've come to expect it, to help you find the places that you have been visiting," Ms Baker said.

Firefox use spread quickly from a small group of users

Ms Baker said that other changes have been made that are invisible in terms of look, but will improve overall performance.

"It will be faster, sleeker, and even easier to use," she said.

"In terms of features, we've tried very hard not to bloat the interface but to keep it simple, the way people like it, and to have new things appear when you need them."

The other substantial change will be the ability to do much more offline, with the browser "remembering" key data that is usually lost when an internet connection goes down.

This is designed to allow the user to continue to work when travelling or in remote areas where wireless access is patchy.

Firefox is currently the second most popular browser, although its 12% share is dwarfed by that of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

It has, however, substantially grown from its launch - first as Phoenix in 2002, then as Firebird, and finally ending up as Firefox in February 2004.

Ms Baker said that when Mozilla issued Firefox 1 they had one staff member, but hundreds working on different aspects of it.

Now they have 150 employees around the world, and "tens of thousands" working on the software.

Mozilla is run as a not-for-profit organisation, and advocate of open source coding.

Sea reptile is biggest on record

A fossilised "sea monster" unearthed on an Arctic island is the largest marine reptile known to science, Norwegian scientists have announced.

The 150 million-year-old specimen was found on Spitspergen, in the Arctic island chain of Svalbard, in 2006.

The Jurassic-era leviathan is one of 40 sea reptiles from a fossil "treasure trove" uncovered on the island.

Nicknamed "The Monster", the immense creature would have measured 15m (50ft) from nose to tail.

A large pliosaur was big enough to pick up a small car in its jaws and bite it in half Richard Forrest, plesiosaur palaeontologist

And during the last field expedition, scientists discovered the remains of another so-called pliosaur which is thought to belong to the same species as The Monster - and may have been just as colossal.

The expedition's director Dr Jorn Hurum, from the University of Oslo Natural History Museum, said the Svalbard specimen is 20% larger than the previous biggest marine reptile - another massive pliosaur from Australia called Kronosaurus.

"We have carried out a search of the literature, so we now know that we have the biggest [pliosaur]. It's not just arm-waving anymore," Dr Hurum told the BBC News website.

"The flipper is 3m long with very few parts missing. On Monday, we assembled all the bones in our basement and we amazed ourselves - we had never seen it together before."

The Monster's flipper alone measures 3m in length

Pliosaurs were a short-necked form of plesiosaur, a group of extinct reptiles that lived in the world's oceans during the age of the dinosaurs.

A pliosaur's body was tear drop-shaped with two sets of powerful flippers which it used to propel itself through the water.

"These animals were awesomely powerful predators," said plesiosaur palaeontologist Richard Forrest.

A second large pliosaur has now been found on the Arctic island Enlarge Image

"If you compare the skull of a large pliosaur to a crocodile, it is very clear it is much better built for biting... by comparison with a crocodile, you have something like three or four times the cross-sectional space for muscles. So you have much bigger, more powerful muscles and huge, robust jaws.

"A large pliosaur was big enough to pick up a small car in its jaws and bite it in half."

"There are a few isolated bones of huge pliosaurs already known but this is the first find of a significant portion of a whole skeleton of such a giant," said Angela Milner, associate keeper of palaeontology at London's Natural History Museum

"It will undoubtedly add much to our knowledge of these top marine predators. Pliosaurs were reptiles and they were almost certainly not warm-blooded so this discovery is also a good demonstration of plate tectonics and ancient climates.

'Monster' fossil find in Arctic

"One hundred and fifty million years ago, Svalbard was not so near the North Pole, there was no ice cap and the climate was much warmer than it is today."

The Monster was excavated in August 2007 and taken to the Natural History Museum in Oslo. Team members had to remove hundreds of tonnes of rock by hand in high winds, fog, rain, freezing temperatures and with the constant threat of attack by polar bears.

They recovered the animal's snout, some teeth, much of the neck and back, the shoulder girdle and a nearly complete flipper.

Unfortunately, there was a small river running through where the head lay, so much of the skull had been washed away.

A preliminary analysis of the bones suggests this beast belongs to a previously unknown species.

Unprecedented haul

The researchers plan to return to Svalbard later this year to excavate the new pliosaur.

A few skull pieces, broken teeth and vertebrae from this second large specimen are already exposed and plenty more may be waiting to be excavated.

"It's a large one, and has the same bone structure as the previous one we found," said Espen Knutsen, from Oslo's Natural History Museum, who is studying the fossils.

Excavations have also yielded long-necked plesiosaurs

Dr Hurum and his colleagues have now identified a total of 40 marine reptiles from Svalbard. The haul includes many long-necked plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs in addition to the two pliosaurs.

Long-necked plesiosaurs are said to fit descriptions of Scotland's mythical Loch Ness monster. Ichthyosaurs bore a passing resemblance to modern dolphins, but they used an upright tail fin to propel themselves through the water.

Richard Forrest commented: "Here in Svalbard you have 40 specimens just lying around, which is like nothing we know.

The 2007 fieldwork took place in challenging conditions

"Even in classic fossil exposures such as you have in Dorset [in England], there are cliffs eroding over many years and every so often something pops up. But we haven't had 40 plesiosaurs from Dorset in 200 years."

The fossils were found in a fine-grained sedimentary rock called black shale. When the animals died, they sank to the bottom of a cold, shallow Jurassic sea and were covered over by mud. The oxygen-free, alkaline chemistry of the mud may explain the fossils' remarkable preservation, said Dr Hurum.

The discovery of another large pliosaur was announced in 2002. Known as the "Monster of Aramberri" after the site in north-eastern Mexico where it was dug up, the creature could be just as big as the Svalbard specimen, according to the team that found it.

But palaeontologists told the BBC a much more detailed analysis of these fossils was required before a true picture of its size could be obtained.

Planet-hunters set for big bounty

Scientists say there may be many more worlds in our galaxy

Rocky planets, possibly with conditions suitable for life, may be more common than previously thought in our galaxy, a study has found.

New evidence suggests more than half the Sun-like stars in the Milky Way could have similar planetary systems.

There may also be hundreds of undiscovered worlds in outer parts of our Solar System, astronomers believe.

Future studies of such worlds will radically alter our understanding of how planets are formed, they say.

New findings about planets were presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston.

Nasa telescope

Michael Meyer, an astronomer from the University of Arizona, said he believed Earth-like planets were probably very common around Sun-like stars.

I expect that we will find a very large number of planets Alan Stern, Nasa

"Our observations suggest that between 20% and 60% of Sun-like stars have evidence for the formation of rocky planets not unlike the processes we think led to planet Earth," he said. "That is very exciting."

Mr Meyer's team used the US space agency's Spitzer space telescope to look at groups of stars with masses similar to the Sun.

They detected discs of cosmic dust around stars in some of the youngest groups surveyed.

The dust is believed to be a by-product of rocky debris colliding and merging to form planets.

Nasa's Kepler mission to search for Earth-sized and smaller planets, due to be launched next year, is expected to reveal more clues about these distant undiscovered worlds.

Frozen worlds

Some astronomers believe there may be hundreds of small rocky bodies in the outer edges of our own Solar System, and perhaps even a handful of frozen Earth-sized worlds.

We have to find the right mass planet and it has to be at the right distance from the star Debra Fischer, San Francisco State University

Speaking at the AAAS meeting, Nasa's Alan Stern said he thought only the tip of the iceberg had been found in terms of planets within our own Solar System.

More than a thousand objects had already been discovered in the Kuiper belt alone, he said, many rivalling the planet Pluto in size.

"Our old view, that the Solar System had nine planets will be supplanted by a view that there are hundreds if not thousands of planets in our Solar System," he told BBC News.

He said many of these planets would be icy, some would be rocky, and there might even be objects with the same mass as Earth.

"It could be that there are objects of Earth-mass in the Oort cloud (a band of debris surrounding our planetary system) but they would be frozen at these distances," Dr Stern added.

"They would look like a frozen Earth."

Goldilocks zone

Excitement about finding other Earth-like planets is driven by the idea that some might contain life or perhaps, centuries from now, allow human colonies to be set up on them.

The key to this search, said Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University, California, was the "Goldilocks zone".

This refers to an area of space in which a planet is "just the right distance" from its parent star so that its surface is not-too-hot or not-too-cold to support liquid water.

"To my mind there are two things we have to go after: we have to find the right mass planet and it has to be at the right distance from the star," she said.

The AAAS meeting concludes on Monday.

Machines 'to match man by 2029'

Tiny machines could roam the body curing diseases

Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029, a leading US inventor has predicted.

Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent, said Ray Kurzweil.

The engineer believes machines and humans will eventually merge through devices implanted in the body to boost intelligence and health.

"It's really part of our civilisation," Mr Kurzweil explained.

"But that's not going to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines to displace us."

Machines were already doing hundreds of things humans used to do, at human levels of intelligence or better, in many different areas, he said.

Man versus machine

"I've made the case that we will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029," he said.

We'll have intelligent nanobots go into our brains... to make us smarter Ray Kurzweil

"We're already a human machine civilisation; we use our technology to expand our physical and mental horizons and this will be a further extension of that."

Humans and machines would eventually merge, by means of devices embedded in people's bodies to keep them healthy and improve their intelligence, predicted Mr Kurzweil.

"We'll have intelligent nanobots go into our brains through the capillaries and interact directly with our biological neurons," he told BBC News.

CHALLENGES FACING HUMANITY Make solar energy affordable Provide energy from fusion Develop carbon sequestration Manage the nitrogen cycle Provide access to clean water Reverse engineer the brain Prevent nuclear terror Secure cyberspace Enhance virtual reality Improve urban infrastructure Advance health informatics Engineer better medicines Advance personalised learning Explore natural frontiers

The nanobots, he said, would "make us smarter, remember things better and automatically go into full emergent virtual reality environments through the nervous system".

Mr Kurzweil is one of 18 influential thinkers chosen to identify the great technological challenges facing humanity in the 21st century by the US National Academy of Engineering.

The experts include Google founder Larry Page and genome pioneer Dr Craig Venter.

The 14 challenges were announced at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, which concludes on Monday.

10 things we didn't know last week

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. If housewives got salaries at the going rate for doing household chores, they would on average earn £30,000.
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2. Pacifist John Lennon was once an air cadet.
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3. Women in Ivory Coast buy “bottom enhancing” injections for $2.
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4. Whales catnap.
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5. Young dinosaurs were prey to a giant frog.
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6. John Prescott played in a parliamentary football team in the 1970s with Jonathan Aitken, Robert Kilroy-Silk and Neil Kinnock.
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7. The female G-spot can be located by ultrasound.
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8. People can have four kidneys.
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9. A replica Statue of Liberty exists in Kosovo.

10. The first pop concert Barack Obama attended was as a 10-year-old watching Elton John.

Gecko 'begs' insect for honeydew

Gecko and bug's bizarre relationship revealed

A bizarre relationship between a gecko and a sap-sucking insect has been caught on camera for the first time.

The day gecko, which lives in the forests of Madagascar, has been recorded begging a bug for its dinner.

The lizard repeatedly nods its head at the insect, called a plant hopper, until it flicks over small balls of honeydew for the gecko to dine upon.

It is not yet understood why the insect so willingly offers up honeydew at the lizard's behest.

Some believe that the presence of the hungry geckos may keep other predators away from the insect.

The footage was recorded for the BBC One series Life In Cold Blood.

It took the crew several attempts to capture this strange behaviour on camera as plant hoppers are very well camouflaged.

Early Mars 'too salty' for life

Experts said the findings 'tightened the noose' on hopes of life on Mars

The Red Planet was too salty to sustain life for much of its history, according to the latest evidence gathered by one of the US rovers on Mars' surface.

High concentration of minerals in water on early Mars would have made it inhospitable to even the toughest microbes, a leading Nasa expert says.

Clues preserved in rocks that were once awash with water suggest the environment was both acidic and briny.

The observations were made by the US space agency's Opportunity rover.

It has spent months examining rocks on an ancient Martian plain.

'Ghost of a chance'

Dr Andrew Knoll, a member of the rover science team, and a biologist at Harvard University, Cambridge, US, said the finding "tightens the noose on the possibility of life".

Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston, he said conditions on Mars in the past four billion years would have been very challenging for life.

The quest for life on Mars will go on with the next generation rover

"It was really salty - in fact, it was salty enough that only a handful of known terrestrial organisms would have a ghost of a chance of surviving there when conditions were at their best," he explained.

The US Mars rovers - Opportunity and its twin, Spirit - have now spent more than 1,400 days on the Martian surface.

As their work comes to an end, Nasa has its hopes set on the Phoenix lander, which is due to reach Mars on 25 May.

The Phoenix mission will land near the planet's north pole, and aim to dig under the frozen surface in search of signs of microbial life, past or present.

The next-generation rover, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), is set to leave Earth in 2009, and land in 2010.

Twice as long and three times as heavy as Spirit and Opportunity, it will collect Martian soil and rock samples, and analyse them for organic compounds.

10 things we didn't know last week

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. A white stag lives in the Highlands.
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2. Brain tumours can be diagnosed by a handshake.
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3. Ian Fleming's contract with the Sunday Times allowed him to spend winter in Jamaica.
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4. Kosovo's dialling code is the same as Monaco's.
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5. A fire at a landfill site in Guernsey has been smouldering for three years.
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6. Staffordshire bull terriers are one of only two breeds that the Kennel Club recommends as suitable with children, the other being a Chesapeake Bay retriever.
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7. 99% of beekeepers are hobbyists.
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8. The Billy Bunter author, Charles Hamilton, is the world's most prolific, according to the Guinness Book of Records.
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9. The UK spends more on cosmetic surgery than Germany, France and Italy put together.
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10. Giving birth to a boy may increase the likelihood of severe postnatal depression.
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Warming risks Antarctic sea life

Surprise find: A king crab in the Antarctic deep Robo-sub grabs crab

Unique marine life in Antarctica will be at risk from an invasion of sharks, crabs and other predators if global warming continues, scientists warn.

Crabs are poised to return to the Antarctic shallows, threatening creatures such as giant sea spiders and floppy ribbon worms, says a UK-US team.

Some have evolved without predators for tens of millions of years.

Bony fish and sharks would move in if waters warm further, threatening species with extinction, they say.

In the last 50 years, sea surface temperatures around Antarctica have risen by 1 to 2C, which is more than twice the global average.

Loss of species

Speaking in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the researchers said global warming could fundamentally change the ecosystem, leading to the loss of some species.

Antarctic sea life has developed a delicate equilibrium The water only needs to remain above freezing year round for it to become habitable to some sharks, and at the rate we're going, that could happen this century Prof Cheryl Wilga

"Sharks are going to arrive in Antarctica as long as the warming trend continues, a bit more slowly than crabs - crabs are going to get there first," said Professor Cheryl Wilga of the University of Rhode Island (URI), US. "But once they do get there they are capable of eating the organisms that live there."

Professor Wilga said the arrival of sharks and shell-crushing bony fishes would lead to dramatic changes in the number and proportions of species found there.

Shrimp, ribbon worms and brittle stars are likely to be the most vulnerable to population declines.

Dr Sven Thatje of the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, UK, said animals living in shallow water in Antarctica were unique on Earth today because they evolved in a very cold environment over tens of millions of years.

Extreme conditions

"In the course of a process we call Antarctic cooling that started about 40 million years ago, all major seafloor predators such as sharks and crabs went extinct in Antarctica because they were not able to cope with these extreme conditions," he told BBC News.

Species have evolved without predators for millions of years Antarctic creatures

"Today, global warming is removing barriers to invasions and we've seen recently that crabs, especially king crabs, are on the doorstep of Antarctica - they can potentially re-invade the shallow waters if warming continues."

The researchers say urgent local and global actions are needed to protect this last pristine environment.

"We have to act now in Antarctica as elsewhere to save the diversity of the planet," said Dr Richard Aronson of Dauphin Island Sea Laboratory in Alabama.

He said measures were needed to stop alien species being brought in through ships' ballast water.

"The local actions are to control ship traffic and control dumping of ballast waters," he told the BBC. "The global actions are what we've been saying for all other environments - we have to control emissions of greenhouse gases."

Strange creatures

Animals that live on the seafloor of Antarctica are some of the strangest creatures on Earth.

The extreme cold and lingering darkness has presented huge challenges to marine life over the passage of time, leading to the evolution of fish equipped with anti-freeze proteins in their blood, and a proliferation of filter feeders on the seabed.

Fast-moving shell-crushing animals such as crabs and ocean-going sharks that are normally key predators have long been kept at bay, as their bodies cannot cope with very cold conditions.

This has led to a dominance on the Antarctic seafloor of soft-bodied, slow-moving invertebrates, similar to those found in ancient oceans prior to the evolution of shell-crushing predators.

Map shows toll on world's oceans

'Fly-over' of impacted oceans Enlarge Map

Only about 4% of the world's oceans remain undamaged by human activity, according to the first detailed global map of human impacts on the seas.

A study in Science journal says climate change, fishing, pollution and other human factors have exacted a heavy toll on almost half of the marine waters.

Only remote icy areas near the poles are relatively pristine, but they face threats as ice sheets melt, it warns.

The authors say the data is a "wake-up call" to policymakers.

I think the big surprise from all of this was seeing what the complete coverage of human impacts was Dr Mark Spalding, The Nature Conservancy

Lead scientist, Dr Benjamin Halpern, of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, US, said humans were having a major impact on the oceans and the marine ecosystems within them.

"In the past, many studies have shown the impact of individual activities," he said. "But here for the first time we have produced a global map of all of these different activities layered on top of each other so that we can get this big picture of the overall impact that humans are having rather than just single impacts."

Co-author Dr Mark Spalding told BBC News that the map was the first attempt to describe and quantify the combined threats facing the world's oceans from human factors, ranging from commercial shipping to over-fishing.

"There's an element of wake-up call when you get maps like this," he said. "Human threats are all pervasive across the world's oceans.

"The map is an impetus for action, I think that it is a real signal to roll up our sleeves and start managing our coast and oceans."

Complex model

The international team of 20 scientists in the US, Canada and UK built a complex model to handle large amounts of information on 17 different human threats.

The map reveals the most and least heavily impacted areas

The researchers divided the world's oceans into 1km-square sections and examined all real data available on how humankind is influencing the marine environment.

They then calculated "human impact scores" for each location, presenting this as a global map of the toll people have exacted on the seas.

The scientists say they were shocked by the findings.

"I think the big surprise from all of this was seeing what the complete coverage of human impacts was," said Dr Spalding, senior marine scientist for international conservation group The Nature Conservancy.

"There's nowhere really that escaped. It's quite a shocking map to see."

He said the two biggest drivers in destroying marine habitats were climate change and over-fishing.

"Out on the high seas, climate change and fishing were far and away the strongest influences," he explained. "The least impacted areas are the polar regions but they are not untouched."

Clear message

The scientists hope the map will be used to prioritise marine conservation efforts.

Andrew Rosenberg, a professor of natural resources at the University of New Hampshire, US, who was not part of the study, said policymakers could no longer focus on fishing or pollution as if they were separate effects.

"These human impacts overlap in space and time, and in far too many cases the magnitude is frighteningly high," he said.

"The message for policymakers seems clear to me: conservation action that cuts across the whole set of human impacts is needed now in many places around the globe."

The findings of the study were presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston, US.

'Record year' for butterfly site

The large blue butterfly disappeared from the UK in 1979 Enlarge Image

A record number of rare large blue butterflies were counted at a key breeding site during 2007.

A survey at Collard Hill, Somerset, counted 354 adults during 2007, beating the previous record of 300 in 2003.

Experts believe a warm spring helped the caterpillars at the National Trust-owned site develop quickly before the arrival of a very wet summer.

Efforts to re-introduce the species began in 1983 after it disappeared from the UK in the late 1970s.

"Despite the poor summer, 2007 was a remarkable year for the large blue at Collard Hill," explained Matthew Oates, nature conservation adviser for the National Trust.

"It saw record numbers of butterflies in flight and it was the earliest and longest flight season since its re-introduction."

Dr Martin Warren, chief executive of Butterfly Conservation, welcomed the survey's findings.

"This is marvellous news for one our most endangered species of butterfly," he said.

"With seven out of every 10 butterfly species in decline, Butterfly Conservation is delighted to be working with the National Trust to save this, and other species."

Ant 'adoption'

In the 1970s, scientists discovered that the reason why the large blue (Maculinea arion) became locally extinct was a result of changes to the way the rural landscape was managed.

The butterflies are dependent on the Myrmica sabuleti red ant (Image: Jeremy Thomas)

A team led by Jeremy Thomas, from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Dorset, found that the survival of the butterflies was closely linked to a particular species of ant.

Professor Thomas observed that up to five species of red ants would "adopt" a large blue caterpillar, but the butterfly would survive in the nest of only one - the Myrmica sabuleti red ant.

But the decline of pastoral grazing saw a demise in the population of these ants, which in turn caused the large blue butterfly to disappear from the UK.

He found that the ants thrived in areas with short grass because sunlight was able to warm the soil, which suited this species.

Yet a shift away from grazing resulted in sites becoming overgrown, which caused the soils to cool.

As part of the reintroduction programme by the conservationists, grazing was re-established on the sites chosen for the butterflies.

Emerging early allowed the site's butterflies to breed before the rains arrived(Image: Dave Simcox)

Their efforts to manage the habitat paid dividends during the summer of 2006, when an estimated 10,000 of the creatures were recorded at sites across southern England.

"Generally, 2006 was a very good year for large blues in England," recalled Mr Oates.

"So, in theory, 2007 was set up very well by the previous year.

"But then we had this unprecedented spring drought in April which affected different large blue sites in different ways.

"One of the many threats facing large blues is spring droughts, and at the original large blue [reintroduction] site the ant populations were adversely hit by the dry April, so the large blue larvae had a very bad time as a result."

Mr Oates suggested that the site at Collard Hill was less susceptible to droughts than other sites, which meant that it was able to cope with the unseasonably dry weather.

He added that the butterflies at the Somerset site emerged in early June, allowing them to mate and lay their eggs before the heavy rains arrived in the second half of the month.

Despite the successful year, England's population of large blues has a history of "boom-and-bust" years, and remains listed as a priority species on the UK's Biodiversity Action Plan.

Nanowires allow 'power dressing'

"Power dressing" may soon have a very different and literal meaning.

Scientists in the US have developed novel brush-like fibres that generate electrical energy from movement.

Weaving them into a material could allow designers to create "smart" clothes which harness body movement to power portable electronic gadgets.

Writing in the journal Nature, the team say that the materials could also be used in tents or other structures to harness wind energy.

"Our goal is to make self-powered nanotechnology," Professor Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology and one of the authors of the paper told BBC News.

More details

"Airflows, vibrations - all these are mechanical energy that we can harvest to power devices."

Dr Dianne Jones, technical director of textile electronics firm Fibretronic, said that as the market for wearable electronics expands, technologies such as the nanofibres would become increasingly attractive.

"Any new power source which could provide a more integrated and soft solution in place of conventional hard battery technology would be very attractive for clothing or other electronic textile-based applications," she said.

Ottilia Saxl, chief executive of the Institute of Nanotechnology, believes the technology could also find a use in healthcare.

"It could perhaps be used to power tiny medical devices like a true cochlear implant or heart pacemaker, or a delivery mechanism for subcutaneous drug delivery implants or antibiotic drug reservoirs for preventing infection in retinal implants," she said.

Hair spray

The nano-generators, as the technology is known, consist of pairs of fibres that look similar to tiny, bendable bottle-brushes.

At the core of each fibre is a Kevlar stalk.

"On the surface we grow crystals called nanowires," said Professor Wang.

Enlarge Image

Each tiny wire is 30-50 nanometres (billionths of a metre) in length and is made of zinc oxide. They are grown in solution.

"The growth is so spectacular that on the surface of the fibre all these nanowires stick out radially," he said. "And you can grow these on any substrate - hair or whatever you have."

One of the bristled fibres is also dipped in gold to act as an electrode. When the pair is scrubbed together they create a small amount of electrical energy.

"The fibre has a piezoelectric effect," said Professor Wang. "This is an important effect that converts mechanical energy to electricity."

Experiments with the prototypes showed that two 1cm-long fibres could generate a current of four nanoamperes and an output voltage of about four millivolts.

"If we can optimise the design we can get up to 80 milliwatts per square metre of fabric - that could potentially power an iPod."

The ability to generate power for personal electronics using the clothing we wear would be a breakthrough in smart and interactive garments Dianne Jones

However, Professor George Stylios of Heriot Watt University, who works on smart flexible materials, said he believed it may be tricky to generate "meaningful" amounts of energy from clothing using the fibres.

"I think it will be very difficult to generate an output useful enough to power up devices," he said.

In particular, he believes anybody wearing the fibres would have to move very fast and would have to wear a lot of fabric.

"You may be able to use the fibres for other applications such as changing the structure or colour of materials," he said.

Fashion show

The fibres are the latest development in the field of "energy harvesting" which seeks to develop methods to recover otherwise-wasted energy and convert it into useful electrical energy.

Device taps people power Smart fabrics hit the catwalk

Everyday examples include wind-up radios and self-winding watches.

The US defence research agency Darpa also has a project to tap energy from generators implanted in soldier's boots.

And earlier this year, scientists in Canada showed off a knee brace that would work as a dynamo.

Professor Wang and his team are aiming to develop devices that could be incorporated into everyday fabrics and materials.

He has already presented a nano-generator attached to a rigid surface that could be used to power sensors on vehicles.

The new fibres, he believes, could be used in smart fabrics. These could be useful to the military as well as gadget lovers.

"The ability to generate power for personal electronics using the clothing we wear would be a breakthrough in smart and interactive garments," said Dr Jones.

Her company - Fibretronic - make textile switches and keypads for clothing that allow users to control mp3 players in their pockets.

She said, there were several challenges to overcome before the nano-generator technology could be used commercially such as developing effective storage for the electricity to ensure a consistent supply.

Cost and ease of manufacture would also be important, she said, but believes the research shows promise.

"The possibility of developing piezoelectric, or energy generating fibres or fabrics has been something that the smart fabrics research community has been speculating about for some time," she said.

"[This work] may have brought the concept one step closer to realisation."

Airwaves sale must 'prove worth'

Digital switchover has freed up spectrum

Ofcom has been accused by union leaders of "betraying the nation" over the sell-off of the airwaves

The regulator is currently working on plans to auction off the spectrum freed up by the digital switchover process.

The auction starts in 2009 and lobbying for how it should be conducted is already fierce.

Tony Lennon, president of union BECTU, believes a public-value test to determine how best to use such a valuable national resource is crucial.

Social benefit

Speaking at a recent Westminster eForum on the issue of switchover, Tony Lennon, the president of BECTU - UK union for broadcasting, film, theatre, entertainment, leisure, interactive media and allied sectors - said he was "appalled" at the way the auction was happening.

"I am stunned that public property is being packaged up and sold off in this way. If Ofcom gets it wrong it will be a massive act of treachery," he said.

"Effectively what Ofcom is doing is selling it off to the highest bidder. Allowing the people with the biggest cheque-books to decide is not the best way."

BECTU - which represents about 27,000 workers across the audio-visual and cultural industries in the UK - is lobbying for a public value test to be applied to bidders in the auction, to ensure that citizens gain the services they most need.

"As well as economic tests, each bid should be assessed on social criteria as well," he said.

Philip Rutnam, one of the keynote speakers at the recent Westminster eForum, moved to reassure delegates of Ofcom's intentions.

"We are not here to raise money for the exchequer but for the greatest benefit of society and citizens," he said.

Risky strategy

Freeview launched to much fanfare in 2003 but what does future hold?

One of the biggest controversies hinges on Ofcom's decision not to allocate any of the spectrum freed up by switch-over - about 30% of the valuable UHF band - to the development of high definition TV services for the digital terrestrial platform.

"The future of the Freeview platform depends on being able to develop high definition. If it doesn't have the necessary capacity it will waste on the vine, forcing people to pay subscriptions in order to watch the BBC," said Mr Lennon.

See what is carried on our airwaves

Ofcom has just closed a consultation on the future of high definition on digital terrestrial TV and is due to report back in the next few months.

It believes capacity for HD channels can be squeezed out of existing spectrum, although detractors argue that it will limit the number of channels available to four, making it the poor relation to services on satellite or cable platforms.

"BBC engineers are working on a new standard which might allow us to put services on existing platforms but it is a risky strategy and we cannot gamble with the future of HD on Digital Terrestrial TV," said Catherine Smadja, head of strategy at the BBC.

Mr Lennon pointed out that incorporating the new technologies necessary for HD on Freeview would require both new set-top boxes and new aerials.

Campaigners forming The Digital TV Group are still lobbying Ofcom to make some of the new spectrum available temporarily while the new technologies are incorporated onto existing spectrum.

Smaller wallets

Viviane Reding wants to see spectrum ring-fenced for broadband

Ofcom is currently consulting on the details for the auction process and is expected to complete this in March and release the final details in July.

Interested parties are keen to avoid a repeat of the 3G auctions where the use of the spectrum was pre-allocated for mobile use only.

But Ofcom does intend to package up the spectrum to make it suitable for particular uses, although it stressed that other uses would also be possible.

Dr Daniel Kirk from consultancy firm Spectrum Value Partners thinks this might be too prescriptive.

"Packaging it could prejudice who will bid. Bidders should be able to mix and match as they see fit," he said.

Lawyer Roderick Kirwan, a partner with law firm Denton Wilde Sapte, believes there are ways of making the process more appealing to those with smaller wallets than the mobile operators, who are seen by most as the obvious candidates to win.

"It could be that Ofcom compensates those who bid or act as match-maker, putting the best bid groups together.

Although some have accused the digital switchover process of being too slow, others are concerned that the auction could be premature.

Most think spectrum will fall into hands of mobile operators

"There needs to be international co-ordination. It is important to know what our neighbours are doing," said Mike Short, vice president of research and development at 02.

Lack of harmony could lead to problems, including interference, and already a conflict of interests seems to be developing.

Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, has expressed a preference for the spectrum to be used for broadband internet access and to help bridge the digital divide especially in rural areas.

But not all are convinced of the business case for broadband.

"If all the newly available channels at 700-800 MHz were bought for broadband access in rural areas it would mean at best about 250Mbps (megabits per second) of capacity consumed by possibly many hundreds or even several thousand users.

So it won't go very far and it has precious little future for system upgrade," said Matthew Howett, an analyst at research firm Ovum.

What spectrum use will best serve the public and how the auction will play out in the UK are yet to be decided but all eyes are currently on the US where auctions are happening right now.

Economically they are judged to be a success - it is estimated the US government has already well exceeded its $10bn target - but the winning bidders and the services they intend to provide will offer insights into whether citizens can also reap dividends from the digital sell-off.

Back to top

South America hosts Dakar Rally

Stephane Peterhansel on his way to victory in the 2007 race

Argentina and Chile will host the 2009 Dakar Rally after this year's race was cancelled because of safety concerns.

The 2008 rally was called off in January after four French tourists were murdered in Mauritania on 24 December.

The event's organisers, the Amaury Sport Organisation, said there had been "direct threats against the race issued by terrorist groups".

Next year's Dakar Rally, which has been going since 1979, will start and finish in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires.

It was necessary to take a break in Africa... the fact the resumption is on a new continent is good news Mitsubishi Motorsport chief Dominique Serieys

It will feature 6,000km of special stages over a 9,000km-long course, details of which are set to be unveiled in Buenos Aires on Tuesday.

"Signing-up priority will be given to the Dakar 2008 competitors," said Etienne Lavigne, director of the Dakar Rally.

Competitors will be able to sign up for the race from 15 May.

Dominique Serieys, head of Mitsubishi Motorsport, the sporting subsidiary of the Japanese manufacturer unbeaten on the Dakar since 2001, said the announcement that the 2009 edition would go ahead in South America was timely.

"It's good news, one month after the cancellation of the 2008 rally," said Serieys.

606: DEBATE How can an African desert rally be held in South America? The artist fomerly known as!

"Mitsuibishi will announce its decision at the end of February or beginning of March. In principle we're very interested.

"It was necessary to take a break in Africa given the geopolitical context there. The fact the resumption is on a new continent is good news.

"We've already taken part in the Atacama Rally and the Las Pampas Rally. Chile and Argentina are countries where there are great varieties of terrain.

"Bearing in mind we don't know the exact details of Dakar 2009, I would think it will make for a very difficult course. But that's great, we want a testing course."

Flying reptiles came in miniature

The fossil is one of the smallest pterosaurs known to science

A new fossil species of flying reptile with a wingspan of less than 30cm (1ft) has been discovered in China.

The nearly complete articulated skeleton was unearthed in fossil beds from north-eastern China.

The 120-million-year-old reptile had not reached adulthood when it died, but neither was it a hatchling.

Study of the fossil suggests it is one of the smallest pterosaurs known, a team says in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new species has been named Nemicolopterus crypticus, which means "hidden flying forest dweller".

The researchers from Brazil and China say the toothless, sparrow-sized specimen contains several unique anatomical features that distinguish it from other pterosaurs (ancient flying reptiles).

For example, some of the foot bones are curved in a way not seen in other members of this reptile group. This, say the authors, indicates the pint-sized creature spent much of its time living in the trees.

The new species survived on a diet of insects, say the researchers

"It is very likely that this pterosaur represents a lineage of arboreal creatures that lived and foraged for insects in the gymnosperm forest canopy of north-east China during the Early Cretaceous," the researchers write in PNAS.

They add that its life among the gingko forests of China marks this species as a rarity among pterosaur species.

"The fundamental importance of this discovery is that it opens a new chapter in the history of evolution of flying reptiles," said co-author Alexander Kellner of Rio de Janeiro Federal University's National Museum.

"Until now, it was unknown that some of these animals had these adaptations to live on tree canopies."

Matthew Carrano, a palaeontologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC said some smaller specimens had been found, but those were clearly younger than this animal.

"It is interesting to see some clear arboreal adaptations in this species," said Dr Carrano, who was not on the research team.

"It confirms a suspicion we had, that pterosaurs were more diverse in their habitats than we knew from the [fossil] record."

Pterosaurs lived alongside the dinosaurs, from 228 million years ago to 65 million years ago. They were the first vertebrates to evolve winged flight.

One pterosaur known as Quetzalcoatlus was enormous, sporting a wingspan of up to 11m (36ft), placing it among the largest flying animals ever.

Illegal downloaders 'face UK ban'

Illegal file sharing costs the music and film industry millions

People in the UK who go online and illegally download music and films may have their internet access cut under plans the government is considering.

A draft consultation Green Paper suggests internet service providers would be required to take action over users who access pirated material.

Under a "three strikes" rule they would receive an e-mail warning, suspension, and then termination of their contract.

Six million people a year are estimated to download files illegally in the UK.

Music and film companies say that the illegal downloads cost them millions of pounds in lost revenues.

FROM THE DOT.LIFE BLOG If the law were enacted it would turn ISPs, like BT, Tiscali and Virgin, into a pro-active net police force Darren Waters, technology editor BBC News website Read Darren's thoughts in full

The proposals are part of a Green Paper - a consultation document issued by the government - on the creative industries that is due to be published shortly.

The government proposals were first reported by the Times newspaper.

Voluntary scheme

The Times suggested that broadband firms which failed to enforce the rules could be prosecuted, and the details of customers suspected of making illegal downloads made available to the courts.

According to the Times, the draft paper states: "We will move to legislate to require internet service providers to take action on illegal file sharing."

Internet providers are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope, Internet Service Providers Association

Some of the UK's biggest internet providers, such as BT, Virgin and Tiscali have been in talks with the entertainment industry over introducing a voluntary scheme for policing pirate activity, but no agreement has been reached.

So far, they have failed to resolve how disputed allegations would be arbitrated - for example, when customers claim other people have been "piggybacking" on their internet service.

'No liability'

The Internet Service Providers Association said data protection laws would prevent providers from looking at the content of information sent over their networks.

"ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope," the association said.

"ISPs bear no liability for illegal file sharing as the content is not hosted on their servers," it added.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said that early drafts of the document had been circulated among stakeholders.

"The content and proposals for the strategy have been significantly developed since then and a comprehensive plan to bolster the UK's creative industries will be published shortly," it added.

"We will not comment on the content of the leaked document."

Steam engine back to the future

The Tornado is ready to come out of the sidings and onto the tracks

The first steam engine built to run on the UK mainline in almost 50 years will be ready for tests in April, says one of the main organisers.

The Tornado has been assembled by steam enthusiasts in Darlington in an 18-year project costing £3m.

It is based on the Peppercorn A1 locomotive, which was withdrawn from service by British Rail in the 1960s.

It will be tested close to the original route of the world's first passenger steam train in the 19th century.

The chairman of the A1 Trust, Mark Allatt says: "It's so wonderfully British - I love it."

He said: "No-one anticipated we would build a new steam locomotive all these years on."

Birthplace of the railways

Hundreds of volunteers from around the UK have joined in the project to build the engine from scratch at a workshop at the Darlington Railway Centre and Museum.

The museum houses Robert Stephenson's Locomotion 1, the world's first steam-powered passenger train, which made its first journey in on 27 September 1825 close by on the Stockton and Darlington Railway.

Mr Allatt hopes to start testing the engine in April on a specially laid track in Darlington and then on the privately-run Great Central Railway line in Leicestershire.

If all goes well, the 72ft (22 metre) long locomotive will be put through its paces on mainline tracks over the summer.

When completed the steam engine will be used for charter journeys.

The A1 class of Pacific locomotives was designed by Arthur H Peppercorn for the London and North Eastern Railway and built in 1948/49.

They were the last of the East Coast Main Line's series of express passenger steam locomotives.

STEAM GLORIOUS STEAM Last A1 scrapped Sept 1966 New locomotive has cost £3m 1314 steam trains still running 2000 tons of coal used annually

When they were replaced by diesel trains in the 1960s, all 49 Peppercorns were scrapped, having been in service for an average of 15 years.

The original locomotive had a top speed of 100mph (160km/h) but the modern version will be limited to 60mph.

Today, heritage trains are a booming tourist attraction.

According to UK Heritage Railways, there are 108 railways in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, receiving a total of six million visitors and generating an income of £50m in 2005.

Q&A: DAB Digital radio

DAB Digital radio is being portrayed in some quarters as the 21st century's version of Betamax, the video format that lost out to VHS in the 1970s.

News that media giant GCap is to close two digital stations and has sold its digital platform has added to the arguments that the format is unlikely to find widespread favour in the UK.

The firm had been a trailblazer in commercial digital radio.

But does it mean digital audio broadcasting (DAB) is no longer sweet music to its listeners' ears?

What is the latest news from the world of DAB?

GCap Media, the UK's biggest commercial radio broadcaster and owner of Classic FM, is to close two digital radio stations The Jazz and Planet Rock.

Is that all?

No, it also plans to sell its stake in Digital One, a national broadcasting platform for digital stations.

Why would this mean the last rites for DAB?

It is not just the closing of the stations that is a blow for the format, but the comments made by GCap's chief executive Fru Hazlitt.

She said GCap sees better prospects in FM and broadband radio, that digital radio was too expensive and that it has not been embraced by consumers in the way GCap anticipated.

However, some analysts have said the move is designed to cut costs in order to fend off a takeover bid from Global.

Is that the only blow to DAB's reputation?

No. Richard Wheatley, chief executive of The Local Radio Company, has recently conjured up the spectre of Betamax, in unfavourable relation to digital radio.

There have been dramatic changes in radio technology

What was his criticism?

He said that DAB did not have any killer application, and that listeners were moving more to the internet for their radio experience.

His comments were made in a report by media and telecoms specialist Enders Analysis which called into question the whole future of DAB.

Are there other potential stumbling blocks to the future progress of DAB?

Only a miniscule number of cars in the UK have a DAB radio installed.

This alone may have convinced the government that the country is not yet ready for a switchover to digital radio, of a type seen in the planned switchover to digital television.

Any good news for DAB?

Well, more than one million DAB radios were sold in the UK in the last three months of 2007, taking the total figure in households to 6.5 million.

Anything else?

DAB output accounted for 10% of all listening in the fourth quarter and broke the 100 million listening hours level for the first time.

How do broadcasters other than GCap see the future of DAB?

They are far more upbeat. BBC Radio and 4 Digital Group confirmed their commitment to developing digital radio in the UK.

They have pledged to look at ways of "encouraging more rapid consumer take-up of digital radio" and developing the available technology to secure a successful future for DAB.

What exactly is the difference between DAB and traditional radio?

DAB is a digital technology for broadcasting radio stations.

Historically, radio programmes were broadcast on different frequencies, with the radio or receiving device tuned into each frequency.

This used up a comparatively large amount of spectrum for a relatively small number of stations, limiting listening choice.

DAB is a way of transmitting sound as computerised bits of information. This takes up much less space in the airwaves, than the traditional analogue system, so there is room for more radio stations and other features.

Its supporters say DAB has increased resistance to noise, fading out, and interference from other channels.

What other benefits does DAB have over analogue?

There are more radio stations, some digital only.

Tuning can be achieved by pressing a button rather than twiddling a dial to tune in, and a display screen can provide more information, such as the name of the musical track that is playing.

Is DAB the only digital audio platform?

No, there is digital TV, which can broadcast radio stations.

All digital TV platforms include at least 20 stations and there is radio on the internet, which can be accessed using a computer.

Residents rally to save oatcake shop

Campaigners have launched an online petition on the No 10 website to try to save the last surviving traditional Staffordshire oatcake shop, which is due to be demolished. But why are the locals so passionate about their oatcakes?

Oatcakes are a type of pancake made with oatmeal which has been a staple for the working classes in Staffordshire for over 200 years.

Between six in the morning and two in the afternoon from Thursday to Sunday every week hundreds of people queue for their oatcakes.

People have been coming to the Hole in the Wall shop in Waterloo Street in Bucknall, Stoke-on-Trent, for over 100 years.

"It's an institution, the Hole in the Wall, they shouldn't get rid of it," says Keith Jones, a taxi driver who has been buying his oatcakes here for longer than he cares to remember.

It is possibly the last traditional oatcake shop in the world Fred Hughes, Local historian

He describes the oatcake as the national dish of the Potteries. "It's just a Stoke thing, it's North Staffordshire, it's a tradition."

The Staffordshire oatcake looks nothing like its Scottish cousin. It's made into a batter from oatmeal, flour, milk and water, and then is ladled on to a griddle and made into a circular pancake.

Imagine a French crepe and you're not far off. It's usually served for breakfast with cheese, bacon, sausage or eggs.

In the 19th Century they were sold from the front rooms of Stoke's terraced houses. Some of these houses evolved into more permanent shops, with a hatch through which the oatcakes were sold on the street.

Factories dismantled

The Hole in the Wall is the last of a dying breed. It sells about 2,500 every day.

"There were a lot of them. There were a couple around the corner here, but as time's gone on they've closed down and become houses," said the Hole in the Wall's owner, Glenn Fowler.

The place has been here something like 100 years, so it takes a lot to destroy it Glenn Fowler, Hole in the Wall owner

Oatcakes are also popular in Cheshire, Derbyshire and parts of north Wales but they have become synonymous with Staffordshire and especially Stoke-on-Trent.

"It is possibly the last traditional oatcake shop in the world," said Fred Hughes, a local historian who hopes that the Hole in the Wall can be saved, even if it has to be moved brick by brick.

"Unfortunately over the last five years we've seen these important factories dismantle and move out of Stoke-on-Trent, big names like Spode and Royal Doulton.

"They've all gone, and the oatcake shop was part of that, because it was part of the community."

Most of the old terraced houses surrounding the Hole in the Wall are already boarded up ready to be knocked down. The Renew North Staffordshire scheme is spending £2.3 billion on regenerating the area, and says it will consider moving it.

"The place has been here something like 100 years, so it takes a lot to destroy it," said Mr Fowler. He and his customers want it to stay where it is, and hope that the new buildings can be erected around it.

Jaws star Roy Scheider dies at 75

Scheider was one of Hollywood's biggest stars of the 1970s Scheider in Jaws Obituary: Roy Scheider

US actor Roy Scheider, best known for playing the police chief in the Jaws movies, has died at the age of 75.

As well as starring in the first two shark thrillers, Scheider received two Oscar nominations during his career.

He was up for best supporting actor for The French Connection in 1972 and best actor for 1979's All That Jazz.

He died in hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas. He had been treated there for multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cell, for the past two years.

Scheider's Jaws co-star Richard Dreyfuss said: "He was a wonderful guy. He was what I call a knockaround actor.

"A knockaround actor to me is a compliment that means a professional that lives the life of a professional actor and doesn't yell and scream at the fates and does his job and does it as well as he can."

First blockbuster

Jaws, released in 1975, was directed by Steven Spielberg and was the first film to make $100m (£51m) at the box office.

It is widely regarded as the film that ushered in the blockbuster era.

Scheider's other film credits included Klute, Marathon Man and Sorcerer.

In the 1990s, he played the captain of a giant, high-tech submarine in futuristic undersea adventure TV series SeaQuest DSV.

Night of stars and absent friends

The cream of British, US and European film talent was out in force at a glittering Bafta awards ceremony - but the night was as much about those who were missing as those who were at the London gala.

British and American stars were out in force at the awards

A vintage year for British actors brought to the awards, among others, Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, of best film Atonement and Daniel Day-Lewis, who said he was honoured to win the best actor award "in my town".

Young performers alongside the experienced Day-Lewis on the red carpet included Sienna Miller and Control star Sam Riley, both rising star award nominees.

McAvoy, speaking outside the Royal Opera House before the ceremony, praised the "great British work on show".

"It's been a great year for America and yet the Brits have still managed to get here through merit, I think - not just through nationalistic pride."

But it was the Americans who upped the ante in the A-list stakes with Kevin Spacey, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel and Oscar-winning Jerry Maguire actor Cuba Gooding Jr delighting red carpet crowds ahead of the ceremony.

Mistaken identity

The Europeans, meanwhile, added more than a hint of glamour to the proceedings.

Proof that I'm astonished - I would have never have worn this skirt Tilda Swinton on winning

Dashing Spaniard Javier Bardem, sporting a debonair beard, picked up best supporting actor for his portrayal of sinister hitman Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men.

Marion Cotillard, stunning in a sequinned Chanel number, flew the flag for France, providing at least as much continental glamour as Bardem.

At one point Cotillard, the star of Edith Piaf biopic La Vie En Rose brought shouts of "Keira, Keira" from members of the crowd who mistook her for her Atonement counterpart.

It was Cotillard, too, who provided the Gwyneth Paltrow moment of the ceremony when she broke down in tears, overwhelmed during her speech after winning best actress.

Perhaps the most outlandish outfit of the night was worn by Briton Tilda Swinton who picked up best supporting actress for Michael Clayton.

"Proof that I'm astonished - I would have never have worn this skirt," she said of her yellow and black Chanel creation in her speech.

It's all down to Ian McEwan's spectacular novel Atonement director Joe Wright

But while the winners who were present provided colour and drama to the evening, those who were absent - for a variety of different reasons - also made significant contributions.

Speaking backstage, Joe Wright, director of best film Atonement, said the success of the film was largely due to author Ian McEwan, who chose not to attend.

"It's all down to Ian McEwan's spectacular novel," he said.

"It's an extraordinary book."

'Steady progression'

Shane Meadows, director of This Is England, voted best British film, dedicated the award to the film's young star, Thomas Turgoose.

Turgoose was discovered at a youth project in Grimsby for children excluded from school. He was not at the awards, perhaps because it was past his bedtime.

Meadows said in his speech: "For Tommo, the young boy in the film, thank you.

Thomas Turgoose plays the lead role in Meadows' This Is England

"I was quite a naughty boy at his age and my life turned around over 20 years and was a very steady progression.

"I took him from a worse place than I'd ever been in and he turned his own life around in six weeks making this film and I want to dedicate this to him."

And, accepting the Carl Foreman Award for special achievement in a first film, Control writer Matt Greenhalgh paid tribute to the late Tony Wilson.

Factory Records boss Wilson, who died last year, was instrumental in the success in the late 1970s of Manchester band Joy Division, whose lead singer, Ian Curtis, is the subject of Control.

Greenhalgh said: "I want to dedicate this to a guy that should be here tonight but obviously isn't.

"Tony Wilson - crucial to this whole story and crucial to me."

Absent friends

Day-Lewis - voted best actor for There Will Be Blood - remembered Heath Ledger in a backstage press conference.

He said: "Obviously, if I hadn't already had the occasion of the Screen Actors Guild awards to dedicate this award to Heath Ledger then Heath would certainly have been a man tonight I would like to have recognised."

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe and Day-Lewis met on the carpet

Rounding off a night of tributes to absent friends was Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who wrote and directed best foreign film The Lives of Others.

He said that without his leading man Ulrich Muehe - who died of cancer after the film was made - the film would not have been a success.

In his acceptance speech, von Donnersmarck spoke of the belief in the film held by Muhe, who played a Stasi agent in early-1980s East Germany in the film.

"When production companies were dropping out and financiers lost faith with this project, Ulrich was willing to stay on this project almost for free," he said.

"He believed in the film and made it possible to get it made.

"Without him there would be no Bafta and this film would not exist."

10 Things We Didn't Know Last Week

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. The oldest Mormon congregation in the world is in Preston, Lancashire.
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2. Naturism is known as Free Body Culture or Freikörperkultur in Germany and was particularly popular in the days of the old East Germany.
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3. There are frogs that use semaphore.
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4. St Kilda has no rats.
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5. Normal mice cannot catch colds.
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6. The three Scottish banks that issue currency lodge funds with the Bank of England three days a week (and are free to move it elsewhere for the other four).
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7. Children in Manchester are twice as likely to have tooth decay as children in Birmingham, who have flouride in their water.
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8. A list of guide prices for items commonly claimed by MPs on expenses is known as the "John Lewis list".
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9. Every year, the world's deserts produce 1,700 million tonnes of dust.
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10. Rat is a common foodstuff in the far north of Thailand.
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Robot glider harvests ocean heat

Enlarge Image

A sea-going robotic glider that harvests heat energy from the ocean has been tested by US scientists.

The yellow, torpedo-shaped machine has been combing the depths of seas around the Caribbean since December 2007.

The team which developed the autonomous vehicle say it has covered "thousands of kilometres" during the tests.

The team believe the glider - which needs no batteries - could undertake oceanographic surveys for up to six months at a time.

"We are tapping a virtually unlimited energy source for propulsion," said Dave Fratantoni of the Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOi).

But Steve McPhail, an expert in autonomous underwater vehicles at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), Southampton, said the machine would not totally do away with batteries.

"You still need to provide power for the sensors, for the data-logging system and for the satellite communications system to get the data back," he said.

As a result, the vehicle would have to return to a ship or shore intermittently to recharge its batteries.

"It's always a trade-off between the power used for the propulsion system and the power used for the sensors," said Mr McPhail.

Ocean network

Oceanographers are increasingly looking at ways to study the oceans over long periods of time and in real time.

Researchers wired the Atlantic in 2004 for the Rapid project

This is key to understanding natural variations in circulation, for example, and to look for any changes.

Already scientists have deployed large networks of sensors across the oceans.

For example, in 2004, NOC researchers strung sets of instruments across the Atlantic to measure circulation patterns.

The Rapid project, as it was known, painted the first detailed picture of Atlantic Ocean currents and showed how they vary throughout the year.

Its successor - Rapid Watch - has just received £16m from the Natural Environment Research Council and will monitor the Gulf Stream until 2014.

Scientists are also in the process of wiring the Pacific.

One project, the Argo network, will consist of an array of 3,000 floats strung out every 300km across the vast ocean.

Sensors on the floats will provide 100,000 temperature and salinity profiles every year.

Another network, the Monterey Accelerated Research System (Mars), will connect a research station in California with a sensor array deployed on the edge of Monterey Canyon, the deepest submarine canyon off the continental West Coast.

Lazy glide

The new vehicles could add to that knowledge by filling in the gaps between the sensors.

The glider has been tested in the waters of the Virgin Islands

For example, it is proposed that Rapid Watch will use an armada of gliders alongside stationary sensors.

The machines are already used in oceanography and propel themselves through the ocean by changing their buoyancy to dive and surface. Wings generate lift and a vertical tail fin and rudder is used to steer.

The latest glider has been developed by Webb Research Corporation and WHOi.

It generates its energy for propulsion from the differences in temperature between warm surface waters and colder, deeper layers of the ocean.

Wax-filled tubes inside the craft expand when it is gliding through warmer water. This heat is used to push oil from a bladder inside the hull to one outside, changing its buoyancy.

Cooling of the wax at depth reverses the cycle.

Since December 2007, the prototype machine has been crisscrossing a 4,000m-deep basin in the Virgin Islands of the Caribbean.

The machine traces a saw-tooth profile through the water column as it lazily glides through the ocean, surfacing periodically to fix its positions via GPS and to relay data back to base.

According to WHOi researchers the vehicle crossed the basin between St Thomas and St Croix more than 20 times studying local currents.

The eventual aim of the project is to deploy a fleet of vehicles to study much larger flows in the North Atlantic.

"Gliders can be put to work on tasks that humans wouldn't want to do or cannot do because of time and cost concerns," said Dr Fratantoni. "They can work around the clock in all weather conditions."

60 Questions - 006

How many tentacles has an octopus? 8

How many tentacles has an octopus? Eight

How was the heir to the French throne known? The Dauphin

If you slander somebody, is it written or spoken? Spoken

In a rainbow, what colour come between yellow and blue? Green

In the "Jungle Book" what sort of creature was Baloo? A bear

In weather, what is a Sirocco? A type of wind

In what sort of glass should brandy be served? A balloon

In which city would you find the Bronx? New York

In which continent are the highest mountains? Asia

In which country could you bathe in the Ganges? India

In which country is the kiwi found in the wild? New Zealand

In which country is the Mojave desert? US

In which decade did man first walk on the moon? 1960's (1969)

In which Italian city would you find the Vatican? Rome

In which month is Valentine's day? February

In which sport are there Madisons and Pursuits? Cycling

In which sport was Jack Dempsey a World Champion? Boxing

In which town was Jesus born? Bethlehem

In which US state is Reno? Nevada

In which US state was there a gold rush? California

Into what will an elver grow? An eel

Nell Gwynn was mistress of which king? Charles II

Of what fish group is the dogfish a small variety? Shark

Of what is the Great Barrier Reef made? Corals

Of what was Antonio Stradivari a famous maker? Violins

Of which country is Akahito the Emperor? Japan

Of which country was Hirohito emperor during WW2? Japan

Of which country was Nelson Mandela president? South Africa

Off which country does Sicily lie? Italy

On which continent is Mount Kilimanjaro? Africa

On which continent would you find gauchos on the pampas? South America

On which street is the New York Stock Exchange? Wall Street

Roughly how many pints is 2 litres? 4

The Yellow, Tasman and Coral seas are all in which ocean? Pacific

What alcoholic drink is flavoured with hops? Beer

What can be igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic? Rocks

What can dogs do that wolves can't? Bark

What colours would a piebald horse be? Black and white

What did Atlas have on his shoulders? The world

What do carcinogens cause? Cancer

What do we call a sand filled obstacle on a golf course? A bunker

What do we call cave dwellers? Troglodytes

What do we call Nicotiana tabacum leaves? Tobacco

What does "K" stand for as in a 15k salary? Thousand

What does supersonic mean? Faster than sound

What does the word crescendo mean in music? Gradually get louder

What does too much work make Jack? A dull boy

What drives the Flintstone's car? Foot power

What has the Statue of Liberty in her right hand? A torch

What is a female sheep called? Ewe

What is a group of performers called? A quintet

What is Aussie Steve Irwin famous for wrestling? Crocodiles

What is campanology? Bell ringing

What is carved on Mount Rushmore? US President's faces

What is dried in an Oast house? Hops

What is ecology? Study of the environment

What is measured by a Geiger counter? Radioactivity

What is stored in a camel's hump? Fat

What is the "Denver Boot?" A wheel clamp

Artist's pottery collection joy

Reg Lloyd began collecting the ceramics in the 1940s

Perhaps former soldier Reg Lloyd should have known from the start that destiny was on the side of the little pot.

It was only a few inches high and looked very delicate but, ensconced in a junk shop, it had survived the German bombs which had wiped out much of the surrounding streets in Exeter.

Mr Lloyd scraped together the one shilling and sixpence needed to buy the item and the rest, some might say, is history.

Because now the pot is one of an astounding collection which the National Lottery Fund has recognised by stumping up more than £300,000 to help buy for a museum in Devon.

From his first purchase just after World War II, Mr Lloyd's collection grew into a cherished array of earthenware, which has even aroused the interest of the renowned Smithsonian Institute in the US.

I even had people turning up at my door from America who were trying to trace their family tree, after finding their name stamped on a bit of pottery from Devon Reg Lloyd

Combining pots which were once used in the region's kitchens and some which were always designed to grace the loftiest art gallery, the value of the 335 pieces rose to such an extent that Mr Lloyd had to sell them - because he feared his house would be turned into a "fortress" to meet insurance demands.

But thanks to the involvement of the Heritage Fund, the £500,000 collection will find a home in Devon at the Burton Art Gallery and Museum in Mr Lloyd's home town of Bideford.

Mr Lloyd, 81, explained how his collection began: "I had just come out of the army and was doing any old job to scrape enough money for art school.

"I was just having a look around this little junk shop which had survived the bombing in Fore Street, when I saw this rather strange, Middle Eastern-looking pot.

"It was from the Lake Cornish pottery in Truro and it cost me the princely sum of one and six.

"It stood on my mantelpiece and I rather admired it.

"After I got married, I went off to Cornwall - like many aspiring artists do - and it was there I bought some Bernard Leach pots, which were for everyday use."

Mr Lloyd found many of his pieces in Portobello Road, London

Mr Lloyd said it was some years later, when he was becoming established as an artist, that his collection really started to grow.

"I was getting a few commissions in London and was spending a lot of my weekends looking around Portobello Road.

"I started finding more and more pottery - mostly made in Bideford, although there were pieces from Fremington, Barnstaple and Truro.

"Some were highly decorative harvest jugs, while others were crudely potted everyday pieces, including one by a Captain Crapper, which I kept in my toilet."

Mr Lloyd says Bideford had a thriving pottery industry dating back to medieval times, with pieces being exported to Ireland, Wales and the US by the 17th Century.

"A great number of pieces were exported from Bideford Quay to America and I've had curators from the Smithsonian in Washington and Plymouth, Massachusetts, who came to study the collection in my home," Mr Lloyd said.

"I even had people turning up at my door from America who were trying to trace their family tree, after finding their name stamped on a bit of pottery from Devon."

Mr Lloyd's favourite piece was made in a small cottage in Bideford.

"It's a tiny little jug - only about 3ins (8cm) high - depicting a shipwreck," he said.

Research wish

"It shows the lifeboat rowing out and an anchor being thrown through the air.

"The detail is such, I'm convinced it was drawn on the spot."

He eventually sold the collection six years ago because the pieces were proving too costly to insure.

The subsequent owner then decided to sell the collection to be housed in the museum.

Mr Lloyd, whose paintings have been exhibited at the V&A and the Tate Gallery, says one of his dearest wishes would be for someone to sponsor a PhD to research the entire collection.

Sudan man forced to 'marry' goat

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his "wife", after he was caught having sex with the animal.

The goat's owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

"We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together," Mr Alifi said.

Mr Alifi, of Hai Malakal in Upper Nile State, told the Juba Post newspaper that he heard a loud noise around midnight on 13 February and immediately rushed outside to find Mr Tombe with his goat.

"When I asked him: 'What are you doing there?', he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up."

Mr Alifi then called elders to decide how to deal with the case.

"They said I should not take him to the police, but rather let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife," Mr Alifi told the newspaper.

'New type of bird' found in Nepal

The bird was first spotted in a wetland area

A previously unknown sub-species of bird has been discovered in the southern grasslands of Nepal, scientists say.

The bird is a warbler with a very long tail and slender beak and has been named the Nepal Rufous-vented Prinia.

Scientists say the bird provides an important geographical link between previously-known varieties in Pakistan and India.

But they warn its tiny population means the sub-species is endangered.

The bird was first spotted in 2005 in a wetland area.

But it is only now that taxonomists have decided it is distinctive enough to be described as a separate sub-species.

'Exciting find'

It has different dimensions from the two other types of Rufous-vented Prinia, and in colour comes between the rich chestnut of its western neighbour and the grey of the one to the east.

Hem Sagar Baral of Bird Conservation Nepal said the find is exciting because while the other two types belong to Pakistan's Indus river basin and the Brahmaputra of north-east India, this Nepalese sub-species fills the gap.

The latest find "appears to form the link" between the two pre-existing sub-species, he said.

The new find brings the number of bird species spotted in Nepal to an exceptionally high 862.

But the conservationists are warning that with habitat loss and degradation, the newly-identified variety is highly threatened, with at most 500 birds currently alive.

They are however elated that it has been found in a reserve which is well monitored by bird-watchers, and are now speculating that there may be more species waiting to be found - new to Nepal, or even to the world.

'Super-scope' shines on Mary Rose

Scientists are using a "synchroton" to study the Mary Rose's timbers How the "super-scope" lights up the Mary Rose

Light rays, 10 billion times brighter than the Sun, are being used to probe the Tudor warship, the Mary Rose.

The research is taking place at the Diamond synchrotron, a beam-generating machine that covers the area of five football pitches.

Scientists are using the facility in a bid to fine-tune the conservation of the historic vessel's timbers.

The Mary Rose, pride of Henry VIII's English fleet, sank in 1545 and lay on the sea bed until being raised in 1982.

The boat's timbers are sprayed continuously

The work carried out at Diamond will help conservators understand more about the sulphur compounds buried deep within the ship's timbers.

Researchers aim to find out how stable they are, as these can be converted to sulphuric acid when oxygen is present - threatening preservation efforts.

After sinking in the 16th Century, the Mary Rose lay on the bottom of the Solent for the next 400 years.

Thanks to a protective covering of sea-bed sediment, many of her timbers and artefacts remained intact when she was raised from the salty depths in 1982.

Since then, scientists have been endeavouring to ensure the preservation of the historic vessel, which is housed at Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard.

From 1994, her hull timbers have been continuously sprayed with a water-soluble wax called polyethylene glycol.

The team is looking at sulphur and iron compounds in the timber

Dr Mark Jones, from the Mary Rose Trust, who is leading the research project, said: "It prevents the wood from distorting, shrinking, splitting, cracking or collapsing.

"But, in addition to that you have to remove some of the salts that have occurred over the many centuries - chlorides, which are easy to wash out, and the iron and sulphur compounds, which in the presence of oxygen can be converted into sulphuric acid."

The biochemist said that over the last 15 years, researchers had successfully neutralised all of the acids in the wood and had removed the vast majority of the troublesome compounds.

Dr Jones told the BBC News website: "What we are now trying to do using Diamond technology is to investigate any remaining compounds that could present a threat in 20, or 30, or even 500 years time."

Silver doughnut

The scientists, from the Mary Rose Trust, the National Museum of Scotland, Daresbury Laboratory and the University of Kent, have been placing thin slivers of the ship's timber into the "microfocus beamline" at the Oxfordshire-based synchrotron.

The facility - sometimes described as a super-microscope - works by speeding electrons around a huge doughnut-shaped chamber until they are travelling so fast that they begin to emit light.

HOW DIAMOND WORKS Electrons fired into straight accelerator, or linac Boosted in small synchrotron and injected into storage ring Magnets in large ring bend and focus electrons accelerated to near light-speeds Energy lost emerges down beamlines as highly focused light at X-ray wavelengths Diamond starts to shine

These intense rays are then channelled off into beamlines and focused on to samples of material, like the Mary Rose timbers, allowing their fine structure to be analysed.

By observing the wood at the cellular level, the team has been able to look at compounds of sulphur and iron buried deep within the timbers.

Dr Jones said: "Over time, sulphur has bonded with the cell walls in the wood, producing a compound that is extremely stable and impossible to remove because it is so deep in the timber.

"With the help of Diamond and university research, we want to make sure that these compounds will remain stable over long, long periods of time under different display conditions."

He added: "Essentially, what we are trying to do is to fine-tune the conservation process so that it lasts for many, many more centuries."

Charles Barker, managing director of Mary Rose Archaeological Services, added: "It is all about looking at potential problems that might crop up that we don't know about now."

Malicious programs hit new high

The numbers of malicious programs have reached "epidemic" proportions

The number of malicious programs found online has reached an unprecedented high, say security firms.

Reports vary but some estimates suggest there were five times as many variants of malicious programs in circulation in 2007 compared to 2006.

Security company Panda Software said it was getting more than 3,000 novel samples of so called malware every day.

Criminals pump out variants to fool anti-virus programs that work, in part, by spotting common characteristics.

Threat landscape

Security software testing organisation AV Test reported that it saw 5.49 million unique samples of malicious software in 2007 - five times more than the 972,606 it saw in 2006.

AV Test reached its total by analysing malicious programs and generating a digital fingerprint for each unique sample.

The organisation said the different ways malware can be packaged will mean some duplication in its figures, but the broad trend showed a steep rise.

The organisation uses the samples to test security programs to see how many they can spot and stop.

Panda Software said the number of malicious samples it received in 2007 was up ten fold on 2006. In a statement it said the rise represented a "malware epidemic".

Finnish security firm F-Secure said it had seen a doubling in the number of pieces of malware it detected in 2007 compared to 2006.

Most of the malicious programs detected by these security organisations are aimed at the various versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system.

The vast majority of these unique malicious programs will be made up of elements from older viruses that have been scrambled to look fresh.

"It started about nine months ago, in early 2007, we saw massive surges of new variants," said Gerhard Eschelbeck, chief technology officer at anti-spyware firm Webroot.

"There are days when we see 1,000 or more new samples," he said.

"It's a low-effort high-frequency type threat," he said. "There's no completely ground-breaking new stuff out there."

He added that hi-tech criminals were adopting several tactics to avoid being spotted by anti-virus programs which try to spot the "signature" of each malicious program they know about.

"Anti-virus relies on customers to submit samples," said Mr Eschelbeck, "but with spyware you typically do not get samples because your customers do not know they are infected."

Increasingly, security firms have turned to new techniques to combat the rise in malware variants. Some use heuristics, or rules of thumb, to spot programs that are similar rather than identical to the ones they have seen before.

Others are using behaviour blockers that shut down any program that shows malicious intent.

Holographic displays step closer

Holographic images created within minutes

Holograms could soon be helping monitor surgical procedures after a faster way to make the 3D images is discovered.

The journal Nature reports the breakthrough by US researchers who developed a novel material in which holographs can be created in minutes.

The images that the material can capture are almost as sharp as those broadcast on US television.

The polymer can also be made into large screens opening up many more possible uses for the 3D images.

Looking good

The problems associated with making holographs has before now limited the use of them to very specialised fields.

But the photorefractive polymer created by Savas Tay and colleagues at the University of Arizona, Tucson, may help to change that as it removes some of the obstacles to producing them.

Holographs are created by mixing reflected laser light with a second laser beam to lay down a static image - typically a lengthy, complicated and delicate process.

Images are laid down in the holographic material using lasers

In a paper in Nature Mr Tay and colleagues describe their thin-film polymer that can have images "written" to it in minutes and can be wiped as quickly to take and display another image.

The material has been shown to stay stable throughout hundreds of write and erase cycles.

The ability to quickly refresh images in holographs could mean that surgeons use them as a guide during operations or as a better way for pharmaceutical researchers to study molecular interactions for new drugs during simulations.

The team has automated the process of capturing, writing and erasing images via a system that can take input from MRI, CAT scans, satellite or aerial photographs and microscopes.

The team released a video showing the images that result from its holographic recording system. They warned that the footage was a "poor guide" to the finished quality which was comparable to the pictures broadcast in the US NTSC format.

Working with hi-tech firm Nitto Denko the researchers have so far only made a screen measuring 10cm by 10cm.

However, in Nature they wrote: "There is no technological limit to the achievable display size, because large thin-film devices can be fabricated and even tiled together".

£26m Bacon painting misses record

Triptych 1974-1977 shows Bacon's lover struggling on a beach As it happened: Inside the auction

A Francis Bacon painting has sold for more than £26m, just £160,000 short of the auction record for a work by a British or Irish artist.

Triptych 1974-77, painted in response to the suicide of Bacon's lover George Dyer in 1971, made £26,340,500 at Christie's in London.

But it failed to beat the £26.4m paid for Bacon's Study from Innocent X in New York last year.

The Dublin-born figurative painter died in 1992.

Tragic death

Dyer committed suicide on the eve of the opening of Bacon's last retrospective in Paris, in the hotel room he shared with the artist.

Many of Bacon's later works were preoccupied with the tragic manner of his lover's death.

Triptych 1974-77 - the last of Bacon's paintings created in response to Dyer's death - shows sequential images of dark, ominous umbrellas and his lover struggling on a near-deserted beach.

Bacon's Study Of A Nude With Figure In A Mirror, painted in 1969, is also expected to fetch more than £25m when it is sold at Sotheby's, in London, on 27 February.

Who uses phone boxes?

By Tom Geoghegan BBC News Magazine, Oxford

Payphone use has halved in three years, says BT, mainly due to mobile phones. So who still uses them?

Few features of British life are so loved, yet so neglected, as the phone box.

A red "K6" - the 1930s design that inspires such national affection - lies empty on St Giles Street in Oxford, despite the lunchtime bustle around it.

Behind the iconic red door, a Pepsi cup and a discarded four-day-old receipt are the only evidence of conversations past.

Like the 16th Century St John's College just yards away, this monument to British design is part of the nation's history. But does it also still have a social function?

They're quite handy, but I prefer my mobile Sam Richardson

On the evidence of an unscientific, 30-minute survey on this particular day, it would appear not. And BT has its doubts too.

There are now more mobile phones in use in the UK - 70 million, says watchdog Ofcom - than there are individuals, although poor network coverage prevents some people in remote areas from having one.

BT has removed more than 30,000 under-used kiosks since 2002 but two-thirds of the 61,700 payphones remaining are unprofitable, it says. So who still uses them?

The answer can be found a five-minute walk away on Cornmarket Street, one of Oxford's main shopping areas, where eight BT payphones - one boasting e-mail and text facilities - get a trickle of customers in the afternoon.

These are not the traditional kiosks so loved, but the maligned boxes introduced in the 1980s, with no door and no privacy. But at least they have demand.

BIRTH OF A BRITISH ICON Sir Giles Gilbert Scott wins a Post Office commission in 1926 for new telephone kiosks His K2 is loved for its domed roof and rectangular panes This design is adapted for the K6, mass-produced in 1935 John Timpson, former Today presenter, writes Requiem for a Red Box in 1989 Banksy puts an axe through one to parody their decline There are about 2,779 Scott-inspired red boxes still listed

Acle Canakci, 19, has been trying to call her mother in Turkey to tell her about her new life as a language student in Oxford. She has a mobile but uses the public phone about once a week to ring home because it's cheaper and she lives with a family and can't use their landline.

She didn't get through this time because, she suspects, her mother's telephone battery is low. Usually the call lasts about 30 minutes and a £5 phonecard can keep her going for a few weeks.

"These phones are still important because it's not only the English that live here," she says. "A lot of people in the world come here, travelling or to study, and they need public telephone boxes.

"Of course, I need them too. I know they're not very private but nobody can understand what I'm talking about in my language anyway."

Coin jams

Although the eight boxes in Cornmarket St have periods as long as 20 minutes without any custom at all, most of the callers that do use them are foreign visitors or workers.

Jorge Sanchez, 17, is learning how to call his sister in Argentina, Frenchman Lionel Chan Hu Theng is talking to his sister in Nottingham, while Pedro Alves is engaged in the very British tradition of phone rage.

Is this the future for the old boxes?

"Before I put in £2 but only spent 60 pence and it didn't give me any change," says Mr Alves, 31, who works in a restaurant and is showing his mother how to ring Portugal.

"I tried to complain and they go to an answer machine so there's no person to speak to. It's very frustrating."

But there is "native" custom too. Sam Richardson, a teenage gardener, uses a payphone for social calls when the credit on his pay-as-you-go mobile runs out.

Sales rep David Antony, 60, is what one may describe as a heavy user. But he says foreign coins jam up as many as half the payphones.

"It takes about three days for BT to fix them but this isn't the only tourist town in the country, BT should be onto this.

"I use them about six times a day for work. I don't like mobiles because I'm not sure they know enough about the electronics and the damage they do. And they are far too expensive still - BT does reasonably priced telephone calls."

Smashed panes

Especially if you stay on the line for the full 20 minutes on a 40 pence call, like teaching assistant Miss Spencer, 40. She recently lost her mobile but is adjusting happily to life without it.

Long distance to Portugal

"I wanted to speak to my sister before she went to a meeting. We forget that we managed to get hold of people and conduct our business without mobiles."

In those days, there would be long queues outside phone boxes and irritation mounted as people spent too long on the phone. Not any more.

An hour spent outside four of Oxford's red phone boxes bears witness to zero use, which suggests their more ugly, younger siblings of the 1980s have the best locations.

The oldest phone box in the city is a rare K2 - the classic 1920s design by Giles Gilbert Scott - and rather fittingly, it is located in the ancient heart of the city at the crossroads Quadrifurcus, more commonly known as Carfax.

K6 and K2: Spot the difference?

Much like the Routemaster bus, the red phone box is associated with an age of innocence, despite the vandalism, the prostitutes' calling cards and the urinating that blighted it.

Unlike its nemesis, the mobile phone, a call made in an old phone box is private, whatever the street chaos outside its four walls. Nowadays, a train carriage can sound rather like a phone box filled with a dozen people.

But there is nothing innocent about this phone box in Carfax, in the shadow of the 13th Century tower of the former St Martin's Church.

Its panes have been smashed and the floor is littered with rubbish and glass. According to staff at the nearly deli it has been like that for at least a week.

Life without a mobile isn't too bad for the Spencers

A Chinese teenager who wants to call her mother in Beijing opens the door, takes one look at the mess and decides against it.

But a group of French students are undeterred. They just want a photograph of themselves crammed inside, saying the red phone boxes they see on television are a "symbol of Britain", like the red bus or black taxi.

Maybe this is a glimpse of its future, its only function a photo opportunity.

Ferry onlookers are 'in danger'

Cargo, such as wood and scrap metal, has fallen from the ferry

People going onto Blackpool beach to look at the stricken Riverdance ferry are putting themselves in danger, the Coastguard has said.

A 400m exclusion zone has been set up around the ship, which was hit by a freak wave and ran aground on the Lancashire sands last Thursday.

Salvagers have winched equipment on board to help them remove the vessel.

HM Coastguard said onlookers must stay well clear of the scene as wood and scrap metal has drifted onto the beach.

A spokesman said: "They're walking out along the sand at low water.

"There's a 400 metre exclusion zone which means you're not supposed to go near it because it's dangerous, there is deck cargo on it."

It is not yet known when the ferry will be removed from the beach.

Tony Redding, a spokesman for Seatruck Ferries, which owns the ship, said: "The ship moved with the high tide and as a result five or six trailers fell from deck into the sea.

GROUNDED FERRY

RAF rescue footage of stricken ferry

Lifeboat video of the listing vessel

Aerial footage of the ferry at first light

SEE ALSO

Ferry rescue man feared for life
04 Feb 08 | Lancashire

Ferry may be grounded for a week
03 Feb 08 | Lancashire

Ferry sheds thousands of biscuits
02 Feb 08 | Lancashire

Smelling a rat on remote Scottish isle

St Kilda is a magical place, grand and imposing, home to more than half a million seabirds who have no land-based predators when they come to nest here.

St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides is home to 250,000 puffins

St Kilda is also an offshore outpost - 50 miles by boat from the Western Isles - so it usually takes quite an effort to get here.

That's partly because the small island group is often lashed by Atlantic storms, which is what happened last Friday.

And it was during the height of the storm that the Spanish fishing boat Spinningdale was washed across Village Bay off Hirta, the main island of St Kilda, and battered against the cliffs.

The rescue of the 14 crew members wasn't the end of the drama because fears were soon expressed about what else might have been on board the Spinningdale - rats.

Wax traps

The reason for this concern is the possibility any rats landing on the St Kilda island group could cause serious damage not only to the seabird colony but also to St Kilda's unique variety of mice.

The National Trust for Scotland, which has owned St Kilda since 1957, sent its own team to tackle the problem.

Rats could easily make it to land and start eating chicks and eggs

Their national species recovery officer, Abbie Patterson, has been setting traps with bait made of chocolate-flavoured candle wax. The idea is that rodents nibbling the bait will leave teeth marks in the wax.

Ms Patterson said: "We'll know if the bait attracted the local mice which are harmless, but we'll also know if any rats have come ashore."

If there were any rats on board the Spinningdale, it would be easy for them to abandon the sinking ship. The trawler is hard against the cliff face, wedged in by the Atlantic swell.

Delicate balance

The threat to the seabird colony isn't something the National Trust for Scotland is taking lightly - St Kilda is home to 250,000 puffins, 30,000 pairs of gannets as well as large numbers of fulmar and storm petrels.

It has always been a place delicately balanced.

In 1840 the last UK great auk died here. It has been uninhabited since 1930. Now the National Trust is hoping the shipwreck won't disturb the ecology of their fragile jewel.

One of the things that makes St Kilda special is its remoteness. Far from humankind, the birds have a sanctuary of their own.

My sea crossing on a fast motor cruiser took three hours and during our first attempt, one passenger broke his ankle and another became so seasick he couldn't continue.

And all this on a day our skipper Angus Campbell told us the weather was better than it usually is in summer.

Barry Morse Dies in London at Age 89

This 1964 file photo, originally supplied by ABC, shows Barry Morse in character as Lt. Philip Gerard. Morse, who played a detective pursuing the wrongly accused Dr. Richard Kimble in 1960s TV series "The Fugitive," died Saturday, Feb. 2, 2008, in a London hospital, his son said Tuesday. He was 89. (AP Photo/Files- ABC)

LONDON (AP) — Barry Morse, who played a detective pursuing the wrongly accused Dr. Richard Kimble in 1960s TV series "The Fugitive," has died, his son said Tuesday. He was 89.

Hayward Morse said his father died Saturday at University College Hospital in London after a brief illness.

Born in London in 1918, Morse trained at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and appeared in British repertory and West End theaters before emigrating in 1951 to Canada, where he became a regular on radio and television.

The actor's Web site estimated he had played more than 3,000 roles on radio, TV, stage and screen over a seven-decade career.

In 1963, he was hired by producer Quinn Martin to play Lt. Philip Gerard on "The Fugitive." The series ran for 120 episodes over four seasons, teasing audiences with the cat-and-mouse pursuit of Kimble, wrongly accused of murdering his wife, by the implacable Gerard.

"He thought it was a good show — well-filmed, well-directed and well-acted," Hayward Morse said. "He had nothing disparaging to say about `The Fugitive.'"

Morse also played Professor Victor Bergman in the 1970s science fiction series "Space 1999."

In 1966, he was named artistic director of the Shaw theater festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, rescuing it from financial crisis.

Morse was a lifelong devotee of playwright George Bernard Shaw, and his son said reviving the festival, which produces the works of Shaw and his contemporaries, was his proudest achievement.

Morse is survived by his son and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

His family planned a private cremation.

France unveils super-fast train

The AGV is billed as the successor to the TGV

French engineering giant Alstom has unveiled a new high-speed train.

The AGV (Automotrice Grande Vitesse) train will travel at up to 360km/h (224mph), powered by engines placed under each carriage, the company says.

Alstom compares the AGV - successor to the TGV - to the world's largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380 plane, in terms of importance and innovation.

The unveiling at Alstom's research centre in La Rochelle is being attended by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

See more details of the AGV design

With an engine under each carriage, the AGV - which translates as "high-speed, self-propelled carriage" - is unlike the TGV, which has engines only at the back and front.

The TGV's maximum speed currently is 320km/h. But a modified TGV achieved a world rail speed record for a train on conventional rails last April, reaching 574.8km/h.

The AGV's new engines are more energy-efficient and the innovative multiple-unit design allows more passenger space, Alstom says.

It also reduces maintenance costs, the company says.

The Italian operator NTV has already bought 25 of the AGV trains, and will run them on the Italian high-speed network at a speed of 300km/h in 2011.

Automotrice Grande Vitesse, AGV Power is distributed along the train in the wheel trucks or bogies rather than being concentrated in the front and rear cars Distributing power under the carriages frees up 20% extra space for passengers. The AGV can carry between 300 and 700 people seated The AGV weighs less than its rivals which reduces its power consumption. It consumes 30% less energy than a TGV

Super Bowl seen by 97.5m viewers

Tom Petty provided musical entertainment at half-time

The Super Bowl was seen by an average audience of 97.5m, making it the second most-watched show in US TV history, according to official figures.

Only 1983's season finale of sitcom MASH drew more viewers than American football's showpiece, which saw the New York Giants score a last-minute win.

It is the most-viewed Super Bowl ever, beating the 94m audience set in 1996, say analysts Nielsen Media.

The game's audience peaked at more than 105m during the contest's last phase.

Famous names

The nail-biting climax to the game, in which the Giants beat the New England Patriots, is thought to have added to the TV broadcast's average audience, while some 143 million Americans are estimated to have watched at some point.

The writers' strike, which has disrupted much of primetime TV, is also thought to have contributed to the buoyant viewing figures.

Alicia Keys performed before the game got under way

More than 80% of viewers in the Boston area were tuned to Sunday's spectacle, while the figure was 67% in New York.

In the UK, unofficial overnight figures showed an average of 700,000 people tuned in for the first three-and-a-quarter hours of coverage on BBC Two, with a further 173,000 watching on Sky Sports 1.

At the end of the match, some 300,000 people were watching on BBC Two at 0300 GMT.

Musician Tom Petty performed during the interval, following in the footsteps of a series of famous names who have played the Super Bowl, including the Rolling Stones and Sir Paul McCartney.

In 2004, Janet Jackson's performance went down in history when she suffered a "wardrobe malfunction" and exposed her breast.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided to impose a $550,000 (£280,000) indecency fine on the CBS network.

The broadcaster is still challenging the fine in court.

Overhaul of net addresses begins

The net's core address books are being updated

The first big steps on the road to overhauling the net's core addressing system have been taken.

On Monday the master address books for the net are being updated to include records prepared in a new format known as IP version 6.

Widespread use of this format will end the shortage of addresses that sites can be given.

The net's current addressing scheme is expected to exhaust the pool of unallocated addresses by 2011.

Short stack

Although people use words to navigate around the web, computers use numbers. A human may type news.bbc.co.uk into a browser bar but the PC trying to reach that site will use a numerical equivalent that it gets from the net's master address books.

At the moment the vast majority of numerical net addresses are written in a format specified by version 4 of the Internet Protocol (IPv4).

On 4 February the master or root servers for the net will have a small number of records added that are written in IP version 6 (IPv6) added to them.

This means for the first time that computers using IPv6, typically a PC and a server, can find each other without involving any IPv4 technology.

IPv6 Explained

Paul Twomey, president of Icann which oversees the addressing system, told the BBC News website there was a need to start moving to IPv6.

"There's pressure for people to make the conversion to IPv6," he said. "We're pushing this as a major issue."

The reason for the urgency, he said, was because the unallocated addresses from the total of 4,294,967,296 possible with IPv4 was rapidly running out.

"We're down to 14% of the unallocated addresses out of the whole pool for version 4," he said.

Projections suggest that this unallocated pool will run out by 2011 at the latest.

"There's not a Y2K problem per se," said Mr Twomey, "but there's going to be a crush so we need to get people applying for them now."

Under IPv6 an effectively inexhaustible pool of addresses becomes available.

Jay Daley, technology director at Nominet which oversees .uk domains on the internet, said many large companies were already using IPv6 as it helped ease administration on large internal networks.

Cable TV suppliers such as Comcast and NTT were using it to pipe IPTV to set-top boxes in customer's homes, he said.

Take up of IPv6 should start to increase, he said, as only recently regional organisations that handed out blocks of net addresses had relaxed the rules about who could get them.

"People are going to have to do it as IPv4 addresses become much more difficult to get hold of," he said.

For a long while, he said, the effects on consumers would be minimal though eventually home routers may have to be upgraded or swapped so they can use the longer addresses.

Adele's album debuts at chart top

Adele has two Top 40 singles as well as the number one album

Singer Adele's debut album, 19, has gone straight to the top of the UK chart in its first week.

The 19-year-old Londoner, who won the BBC's Sound of 2008 poll last month, also remains at number two in the singles chart with Chasing Pavements.

Another of her singles, Hometown Glory, has entered the chart at number 32.

Swedish DJ Basshunter has the number one single for a fourth week with Now You're Gone - Hot Chip's Ready for the Floor was the highest new entry at six.

Yorkshire band One Night Only's debut single Just For Tonight leapt 30 places to occupy the number nine position in the singles chart, while singer-songwriter David Jordan's Sun Goes Down moves up 12 places to number 10.

Welsh hard rock band Bullet For My Valentine's second album, Scream Aim Fire, is a new entry at number five.

Last week's number one album, Scouting For Girls' eponymous debut, fell to number two while Nickelback rose to number three with All The Right Reasons.

Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant saw his collaboration with Alison Krauss, Raising Sand, slip to number five.

300-year-old shopping list found

The list is so delicate it has been mounted on card

A Chinese shopping list thought to have been written 300 years ago has been found stuffed inside an 18th Century vase in a York stately home.

The discovery was made at Fairfax House while artefacts were being cleaned.

Supervisor Peter Musgrove said: "I heard a rattling in a vase and found a crumpled-up piece of rice paper with black ink Chinese writing."

The list, showing the cost of pigments purchased to decorate the vase, will be sent away for further analysis.

Fairfax House, in the heart of York, displays some of the finest English 18th Century furniture in the country.

The house was built in 1762 as a dowry for Anne Fairfax, the only surviving child of Viscount Fairfax.

It was opened to the public 25 years ago.

'Bizarre' new mammal discovered

The curious-looking creature was caught on camera

A new species of mammal has been discovered in the mountains of Tanzania, scientists report.

The bizarre-looking creature, dubbed Rhynochocyon udzungwensis, is a type of giant elephant shrew, or sengi.

The cat-sized animal, which is reported in the Journal of Zoology, looks like a cross between a miniature antelope and a small anteater.

It has a grey face, a long, flexible snout, a bulky, amber body, a jet-black rump and it stands on spindly legs.

"This is one of the most exciting discoveries of my career," said Galen Rathbun, from the California Academy of Sciences, who helped to confirm the animal was new to science along with an international team of colleagues.

They are so bizarre-looking and a lot of their behavioural ecology is so unique and interesting, you kind of get wrapped up with them Galen Rathbun

Despite its name, the creature, along with the 15 other known species of elephant shrew, is not actually related to shrews.

Dr Rathbun told the BBC News website: "Elephant shrews are only found in Africa. They were originally described as shrews because they superficially resembled shrews in Europe and in America."

In fact, the creature is more closely related to a group of African mammals, which includes elephants, sea cows, aardvarks and hyraxes, having shared a common ancestor with them about 100 million years ago.

"This is why they are also known as sengis," explained Dr Rathbun.

The new species was first caught on film in 2005 in Ndundulu Forest in Tanzania's Udzungwa Mountains by a camera trap set by Francesco Rovero, from the Trento Museum of Natural Sciences in Italy.

Dr Rathbun said: "I got these images, and said to myself: 'Boy, these look strange'. But you can't describe something new based just on photographs, so in March 2006, we went back in and collected some specimens."

Flashy creatures

He told the BBC that it quickly became apparent that the creatures were new to science.

He said: "Elephant shrews are almost all distinguished by distinctive colour patterns, and this is especially true of the forest-dwelling giant sengis.

The animal uses its long snout for scooping up insects

"They are all quite flashy - one species has a bright golden rump, another checkers along the rump - so when you have a colour pattern that just isn't similar to what is out there, you know it is fairly obvious that you have got something new.

"And this one, with its grey face and black rump, was pretty different."

As well as its distinctive colouring, the new species is also larger than other species of giant elephant shrew, weighing 700g (25oz) and measuring about 30cm (12in) in length.

It uses its long, flexible nose and tongue to flick up insects, such as termites, and it is most active in daylight.

Dr Rathbun added: "They are behaviourally fairly simple - they are not like a dog or cat you can interact with - but they are so bizarre-looking and a lot of their behavioural ecology is so unique and interesting, you kind of get wrapped up with them."

The scientists say there is still much to learn about the Rhynochocyon udzungwensis, but they hope further research will help to answer questions about how many of the animals exist, their range and how closely the animals live together.

Tanzania's Udzungwa Mountains are biodiverse-rich. In addition to this new species, a number of other new animals have been found there, including the Udzungwa partridge, the Phillips' Congo shrew, and a new genus of monkey known as Kipunji as well as several reptiles and amphibians.

Dr Rathbun said it was vital the area and its inhabitants in this biodiversity "hotspot" were protected.

New cable cut compounds net woes

The first cut caused widespread disruption to net services

A submarine cable in the Middle East has been snapped, adding to global net problems caused by breaks in two lines under the Mediterranean on Wednesday.

The Falcon cable, owned by a firm which operates another damaged cable, led to a "critical" telecom breakdown, according to one local official.

The cause of the latest break has not been confirmed but a repair ship has been deployed, said owner Flag Telecom.

The earlier break disrupted service in Egypt, the Middle East and India.

"The situation is critical for us in terms of congestion," Omar Sultan, chief executive of Dubai's ISP DU, told The Associated Press, following the most recent break.

Wednesday's incident caused disruption to 70% of the nationwide internet network in Egypt on Wednesday, while India suffered up to 60% disruption.

Flag Telecom said a repair ship was expected to arrive at the site of the first break - 8.3km from Alexandria in Egypt - on 5 February, with repair work expected to take a week.

A repair ship deployed to the second break - 56km from Dubai - was expected to arrive at the site in the "next few days", the firm said.

Web returns

The first cable - the Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) - was cut at 0800 on 30 January, the firm said.

INSIDE A SUBMARINE CABLE 1 Polyethylene cover 2,4 Stranded steel armour wires 3,5 Tar-soaked nylon yarn 6 Polycarbonate insulator 7 Copper sheath 8 Protective core 9 Optical fibres Not to scale

A second cable thought to lie alongside it - SEA-ME-WE 4, or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable - was also split.

FLAG is a 28,000km (17,400 mile) long submarine communications cable that links Australia and Japan with Europe via India and the Middle East.

SEA-ME-WE 4 is a submarine cable linking South East Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

The two cable cuts meant that the only cable in service connecting Europe to the Middle East via Egypt was the older Sea-M-We 3 system, according to research firm TeleGeography.

The firm said the cuts reduced the amount of available capacity on the stretch of network between India and Europe by 75% percent.

As a result, carriers in Egypt and the Middle East re-routed their European traffic around the globe, through South East Asia and across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The cause of the break has still not been confirmed. The third break is unlikely to disrupt commerce in the region as many business are closed on Fridays.

Initial reports suggested that it could have been snapped by a ship's anchor.

Internet service providers said they expected India's to be back to about 80% of its usual speed by the end of Friday.

In Egypt Minister of Communications and Information Technology Tarek Kamil said he expected to be at the same capacity within two days.

"However, it's not before ten days until the internet service returns to its normal performance," Kamil told the state Al-Ahram newspaper.

Electric dreams

Residents donated £30,000 to the cost

The tiny Hebridean island of Eigg has never had a mains supply of electricity, relying on micro-generators to power its crofthouses and small businesses. So what's the feeling ahead of the big switch-on?

While most Britons turn on radios and kettles as soon as they wake, Sue Kirk has to trudge outside to crank her generator by hand.

"You might not bother with the generator for just the lights," says Mrs Kirk, who runs a shop on the remote island of Eigg.

"You might just have candles instead, it's a bit rustic. You notice the lack of electricity in the winter when it's dark."

WHERE IS EIGG? Big switch-on at Eigg

For the first time, the tiny island with fewer than 100 residents will receive mains electricity on Friday.

A combined hydro-electric, wind and solar powered system will supply continuous power to the light bulbs, computers and washing machines of the island's 71 properties via a six-mile network of cables.

"Folk here are used to doing things for themselves," says Maggie Fyffe, the secretary of the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust, the community body that owns the 12-square mile island.

Ten years ago, the island became a powerful symbol of independence when its inhabitants teamed up with the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Highland Council to take over the land for themselves.

The move came after years of living under private and often absentee ownership, and at last gave the islanders control of their own destiny.

BEFORE THE SWITCH ON... homes were powered by diesel, wind or hydro-generators electricity was unreliable and restricted to certain hours some residents went without washing machines and vacuum cleaners the noise from the generators could be heard for miles Diesel was delivered by boat but services sometimes cancelled

Since then they have renovated houses, created businesses, installed broadband and in the latest community triumph, given themselves power.

"I'm really looking forward to a washing machine and a Hoover," Mrs Fyffe says. "Until now I've had to wash everything by hand".

Simple matters that do not cross the mind of those used to constant electricity are at the forefront of every Eigg resident's mind.

...AND AFTER a new £1.6m high-voltage network harnessing wind, hydro and solar power electricity will be continuous cheaper bills are expected

Karen Helliwell, who runs a guesthouse, says: "It sounds ridiculous, but modern washing machines take up a lot of power, so you need a reliable generator.

"You have to turn the tumble dryer on to get the generator up to speed. With so much power it's almost cutting itself out before you can turn the washing machine on.

"Then you have to listen to the change in notes, when it reaches the powerful spin, before you can turn the tumble dryer off, so you don't break the generator. You can't go out and leave it, you need to be there all the time."

20-year campaign

It has been hard for both individuals and the island's few businesses. The village shop has only a small freezer and chiller and has only recently been able to power them for 24 hours a day.

You can't go out for a quiet evening walk, because every house you walk past has its generator on and all you'll hear is 'thud thud thud' Karen Helliwell Guesthouse owner

The area around the pier in the south-east corner of the island, which contains several of the main businesses including the shop, a tearoom and offices, was powered by a micro-hydro scheme, but a particularly dry spell late last year left them reliant on a back-up generator.

In November that 14 kilowatt (kW) generator broke and since then, those businesses have shared a single 10 kW source. After the switch-on, they can use 10 kW each.

The breakthrough comes at the end of a 20-year campaign of phone calls and letters to persuade the electricity companies and the government to install mains power.

THE ISLAND OF EIGG The name of the island is pronounced 'egg' The residents bought the island in 1997 and run it under the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust In the 1920s it was a private sporting estate The Normandy landing was rehearsed there in WW2 Its squeaky beach is nick- named the Singing Sands Population was 500 in the 19th Century and in 2005 was 87 South of Skye, the island is 9km long and 5km wide

Residents decided they could go without power for no longer and by 2006 the £1.6m cost was met, thanks to residents, the European Union, lottery cash and other bodies.

"We're very proud, an awful lot of people have put a lot of effort in," says Mrs Fyffe. With a population of only 87, teamwork was essential, but something they were already used to.

"We've got farmers, school teachers, a doctor, people who work in the teashop - everybody here has several jobs to make the island work."

It was important to use renewable power sources, she says, in keeping with the island's green credentials, and there are many lessons the rest of the UK could learn about energy conservation and self-sufficiency.

But are there any reservations about losing the island's reputation as an idyllic retreat?

Far from it, it seems. "It'll be far less noisy," says Mrs Helliwell. "You can't go out for a quiet evening walk, because every house you walk past has its generator on and all you'll hear is 'thud thud thud', you can hear a generator from three miles away going 'thud thud thud'."

Having a breather

And amid all the excitement and her thoughts of getting a toaster, Mrs Kirk finds a glimmer of regret.

The new system combines solar, wind and hydro power

"I daresay if in years to come when we get a whiff of diesel we may be reminded of life like this," reflects Mrs Kirk.

"It's also a nice community event, collecting the diesel from the harbour every month."

So with the electric dream realised, what's next on the list of improvements?

"We'll all have a wee pause of breath after this," says Mrs Fyffe, "but there's always something we can tackle."

Farewell to the curry king

Our regular column covering the passing of significant - but lesser-reported - characters of the past month.

Mr Latif completed a curry delivery to Sydney

• Abdul Latif was a British restaurateur of Bangladeshi origin who created a dish he dubbed "curry hell". It was so hot he would waive payment for anyone coming into his Newcastle-upon-Tyne restaurant who could actually finish it. Never one to turn down an opportunity for publicity, he offered five years worth of free meals to British service personnel who had served in Iraq. He also held the record for the world's longest curry delivery, from Newcastle to Sydney, Australia. The leader of Newcastle City Council called him an ambassador for the city.

George MacDonald Fraser penned the 'Flashman' novels

• The coward and bully Sir Harry Flashman often enjoyed a good curry during his service in India. The author George MacDonald Fraser wrote a dozen novels containing the fictitious exploits of the cad expelled from Rugby School in Tom Brown's Schooldays. Flashman somehow rose to the rank of general despite spending the whole of his military career studiously avoiding danger and preferring the boudoir to the battlefield.

Irish country singer Joe Dolan had a number one hit in 1969

•Joe Dolan never made number one in India but his biggest hit, Make Me An Island, was number one in 14 other countries in 1969. One of the highlights of a 40-year career came in 1978 when the Irish country singer became one of the first western singers to perform in the Soviet Union. His showband roots made him a popular performer on the UK cabaret scene and his energetic style was likened to Tom Jones. In 2005 his hip was sold on eBay for charity, costing one fan £500.

• The Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman believed that cars and pedestrians could co-exist safely without the need for segregation. He pioneered the concept of "naked streets" - the removal of street furniture such as traffic lights, railings and curbs claiming that a natural interaction between pedestrian and motorist created a more civilised environment. His ideas have been seized on by authorities in the UK who, to date, have created more than 40 schemes.

• His ideas would have found approval from Peggy Jay who fought tirelessly to preserve Hampstead Heath. A Labour activist she became the youngest person to be elected to the old London County Council in 1938. She was one of a group of Hampstead Labour ladies encouraged to take office by Herbert Morrison. A resident of NW3 all of her life she defended the Heath with vigour, once appearing in the street in her dressing gown to prevent trees from being felled. She also campaigned, with much success, to open the London canal system up for public use.

• If changes in street design allowed children to, once more, play games in the road Richard Knerr would have been delighted. The American-born inventor came up with the idea of the plastic hula hoop after hearing how Australian children were spinning wooden rings around their waists in gym classes. His company also came up with the original Frisbee, much to the annoyance of picnic parties in the park who found the plastic discs landing in their sandwiches.

Miles Kington coined 'Franglais' in his columns for Punch magazine

• If Miles Kington was writing this, he would have had something witty to say about "le frisbee". The humorist coined the word "Franglais" in a long-running series of columns for Punch - where he was literary editor - and in a number of books including Let's Parler Franglais! and the Franglais Lieutenant's Woman. A polymath with a great knowledge of jazz critic and a love of languages, he continued penning his column for the Independent up until the last week of his life.

• Jazz Club was the name of The Fast Show sketch that parodied the BBC's influential and long-running music show, Old Grey Whistle Test. The programme was the idea of Rowan Ayers and it was a complete departure from the normal teen pop shows, featuring some of the most influential musicians of the time in live studio performances. Many famous acts made their British debut on Whistle Test's sparse set including Bob Marley & the Wailers. Ayers also conceived Points of View and Open Door

Among others who died in January were General Suharto, former Indonesian dictator, John Harvey Jones, Troubleshooter, Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Everest, Heath Ledger, actor, Jeremy Beadle, TV prankster and Bobby Fischer, eccentric former World Chess Champion.

An Epoch in the making

We may be witnessing a transformation of the Earth as profound as the end of the age of the dinosaurs, and entering a geological period as distinctive as the Jurassic - and the reason is that we are causing it.

Writing in the house journal of the Geological Society of America, GSA Today, Britain's leading stratigraphers (experts in marking geological time) say it is already possible to identify a host of geological indicators that will be recognisable millions of years into the future as marking the start of a new epoch - the Anthropocene.

Geologists have long divided the Earth's history into distinct epochs, periods and eras - with names as familiar as the Triassic or the Carboniferous.

It's extraordinary how a single species could have such an effect on the whole planet Dr Jan Zalasiewicz, Leicester University

Transitions between them can be easily recognised, with sharp changes in the fossil record, or in the chemistry of the rocks of the time.

Sometimes the boundaries mark extreme violence.

The end of the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago, and with it the dinosaurs, and the beginning of the Tertiary (the 'third' age of geology) came with the impact of a huge asteroid.

A force of nature

Sediments around the world from that time carry a tell-tale layer tinged with iridium, a metal more common in space than it is on the Earth's surface.

There can also be soot - the result of global wildfires that followed the catastrophe. The fossil record either side of the boundary is quite distinct.

Plate tectonics, the slow movement of the continents, has also created dramatic changes, as huge mountain ranges are built or ocean basins are cut off or opened up.

New periods are created as the Earth system passes through a new threshold.

But the new epoch has not been shaped by these relentless forces of the deep Earth or the violence of extraterrestrial impacts. Instead, say the scientists, it has been moulded by a single species - man - so that it should be called the Anthropocene, the time of man.

"It's extraordinary how a single species could have such an effect on the whole planet," says Leicester University's Dr Jan Zalasiewicz, who heads the Stratigraphic Commission of the Geological Society, the team that penned the new report.

"Human activity exceeds natural processes in many ways.

"For example, humans emit more CO2 than do volcanoes by quite a long way; humans move more material across the surface of the Earth than do rivers, landslides and floods."

'Blink of an eye'

Bringing an academic rigour to a concept that has been circulating since 2000 when it was first proposed by Nobel Laureate and ozone expert Paul Crutzen, the researchers ask whether there is a worldwide signature that could be recognised long into the future as marking the start of this new epoch.

"What we're asking is what the record in the rocks of the human species is going to look like," says co-author Dr Andy Gale, from the University of Portsmouth.

"It's fascinating thinking what record future geologists will see of human activity.

"For one thing, there will be a hell of a lot of concrete. And the disruption to the Earth's surface, stripped for farming and mining, causing a vast increase in the amount of mud and sand sediment going into the oceans."

"There are other signals," adds Dr Zalasiewicz. "The oceans are acidifying right now. If they acidify much further, coral reefs will stop growing. And so reef limestone will stop being produced. And that will be another very obvious sign in future strata."

Huge changes will occur in the fossil record. Not just because of the mass extinction we are causing, but because of the huge number of human remains that will become melded into future rock layers.

Many of these geological changes stretch out over generations of human history - frustrating attempts to pinpoint the kind of "golden spike" the geologists would like. But even a thousand human generations would be but the blink of an eye in the deep geological record.

"In many rock successions a thousand years can be a millimetre or two," explains Andy Gale.

"So geologically speaking, this series of events is proceeding very fast. I don't think the changes are going to be subtle at all - these signs would be very conspicuous"

Future geologists

Epochs come lowest in the order of geological timescale. By current definitions, we're in the Holocene epoch ("wholly recent") that started at the end of the last ice age. The larger timescales - the periods and eras - are driven by more powerful forces.

The question the geologists are asking is just how big a change we are wreaking on the planet.

You could say the Anthropocene started 200 years ago with the industrial revolution, or 5,000 years ago when sediments started accumulating the first signals of metalwork. But equally interesting is when it will end.

"If humans stop, it won't be that the effects stop. The effects will ramify through the system for a considerable time. If the impacts are big enough, you make whole groups of creatures extinct. And then the future life comes from the survivors, so life changes? and the Earth changes."

This happened when the dinosaurs were wiped out, heralding a new period of Earth history. The comparison is irresistible to the report's authors, including Dr Mark Williams of Leicester University: "We are clearly changing the planet at an exponential rate. And it's possible we could be starting a new geological period and this could be the Anthropocene Period."

Unfortunately to find out, we may need to wait tens if not hundreds of millions of years.

10 things we didn't know this time last week

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. Fear of needles is known as belonephobia.
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2. Double-income families are not a modern invention - in prehistoric times, they were the norm.
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3. Cumbria is the safest county in England and Wales.
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4. The D-Day landings were practised on the island of Eigg.
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5. Irish singer Joe Dolan sold his hip for charity in an online auction.
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6. Some 2.9 million rooms have been lost in British homes over the past five years as owners opt for open-plan designs.

7. Almost 4% of Scotland's phone boxes didn't host a single call in 2007.
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8. The age at which we are most vulnerable to depression is 44, while a 70-year-old who is physically fit is, on average, as happy and mentally healthy as a 20-year-old.
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9. Chameleons change colour to stand out and attract mates, rather than hide.
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10. Harry S Truman, former US president, has no middle name - his advisers insisted he insert an initial between his first and last names if he was to have any credibility with US voters.
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'Last wave' for wild golden frog

Now extinct frog filmed waving, wrestling and courting

A BBC film crew has captured footage of a rare frog waving, wrestling and courting for the first time.

The Panamanian golden frog communicates with other frogs by semaphore in the form of gentle hand waves.

It has evolved the mechanism to signal to rivals and mates above the noise of mountain streams.

Shortly after filming for the BBC One series Life In Cold Blood, the frogs had to be rescued from the wild, due to the threat of chytrid fungus.

Hilary Jeffkins, senior producer of Life In Cold Blood, said the semaphoring behaviour of the Panamanian golden frog was very unusual.

"Normally, frogs would croak to get their message across but it's too noisy," she said. "An extra mechanism they've evolved is to wave to each other."

'Final wave'

The frogs (Atelopus zeteki) were filmed at a remote location in the Panamanian rainforest. The population had all but disappeared because of a fungus that grows on the amphibians' skin and suffocates them.

The film crew was disinfected - to stop them from carrying the disease - and managed to capture unique footage of the frogs in the wild.

THE GOLDEN FROG Locals believe the frogs turn to solid gold when they die Even a sighting of one is considered lucky Golden frogs are highly toxic

Just after filming was completed in June 2006, the location was overtaken by the chytrid fungus.

Scientists were forced to remove the remaining frogs from the wild and keep them in captivity.

Hilary Jeffkins added: "The whole species is now extinct in Panama - this was one of the last remaining populations. It's final wave in our programme."

Chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) is a major contributor to the decline of amphibian populations around the world, threatening many species with extinction.

Sir David Attenborough brings viewers the final chapter of his epic overview of life on Earth as he transforms perceptions of cold-blooded animals in the landmark BBC One series Life In Cold Blood. It starts on Monday 4 February at 2100 GMT

60 Questions - 005

Which poisonous gas was used during World War 1? Mustard gas
Which prison was demolished after the death of Rudolf Hess? Spandau
Which relatives are "kissin" in the 196Elvis song? Cousins
Which religion was founded by Mohammed? Islam
Which river separates the US and Mexico? Rio Grande
Which Roman slave removed a thorn from a lion's paw? Androcles
Which sign of the zodiac is represented by the twins? Gemini
Which singer starred in the "Road" movies? Bing Crosby
Which South Pacific Island has many giant stone figures? Easter Island
Which sports car was developed from the VW Beetle? Porsche
Which star sign is represented by a goat? Capricorn
Which two countries do the Niagara Falls border? US and Canada
Which type of bee mates with the queen? Drone
Which US state is made up of the Sandwich Islands? Hawaii
Who first provided Mickey Mouses's voice? Walt Disney
Who founded Playboy magazine? Hugh Hefner
Who had a top hit in 1988 with "One Moment in Time?" Whitney Houston
Who had adventures Through the Looking Glass? Alice
Who has been married to Ursula Andress, Linda Evans and Bo Derek? John Derek
Who is Barbie's boyfriend? Ken
Who is Sean Connery's actor son? Jason
Who named his Jamaican home Goldeneye? Ian Fleming
Who played William Wallace in Braveheart? Mel Gibson
Who ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975? General Franco
Who starred in The Truman Show? Jim Carrey
Who starred in True Grit and the Green Berets? John Wayne
Who was a giant to the people of Lilliput? Gulliver
Who was Ginger Rogers' most famous partner? Fred Astaire
Who was known as the Big O? Roy Orbison
Who was known as the Big O? Roy Orbison
Who was shot by James Wilkes Booth? Abraham Lincoln
Who was the A Team's pilot? Murdoch
Who watched Lady Godiva ride naked through Coventry? Peeping Tom
Who were the legendary founders of Rome? Romulus and Remus
Who wrote James and the Giant Peach? Roald Dahl
Whose uncle is Scrooge McDuck?
What is the first letter of the Greek alphabet? Alpha
What name connects Hollywood's Lionel, Ethel and John? Barrymore
Which family was featured in The Sound of Music? Von Trapp
Which metal is liquid at room temperature? Mercury
3½ pints are roughly how many litres? 2
Alpha and beta are letters in which language? Greek
Complete this title - The Four Horsemen of the? Apocalypse
For what did miners use caged birds? Detecting gas
For what does AOL stand? America On Line
For what purpose does a fish need gills? Breathing
For what was Colditz Castle used in WW2? A prison camp
From which country did the Statue of Liberty come? France
From which country do most diamonds come? South Africa
From which country was Pakistan separated in 1947? India
From which geographical line does Ecuador derive its name? The equator
From who did the US buy Alaska? Russia
How did sailors make the Dodo extinct? They ate them
How is the former Ceylon now known? Sri Lanka
How many angles has a decagon? 10
How many cars are on the track in a Drag Race? 2
How many colours are in a rainbow? Seven
How many feet in a fathom? 6
How many seconds are there in minutes? 900
How many sides has a trapezium? 4

Pirate Bay hit with legal action

The Pirate Bay has millions of users

Four men who run one of the most popular file-sharing sites in the world have been charged with conspiracy to break copyright law in Sweden.

The Pirate Bay's servers do not store copyrighted material but offer links to the download location of films, TV programmes, albums and software.

The website is said to have between 10 and 15 million users around the world and is supported by online advertising.

Police seized computers in May 2006, temporarily shutting down the website.

Prosecutor Hakan Roswall said the website was commercially exploiting copyright-protected work because it was financed through advertising revenues.

According to the Pirate Bay website, its users are currently downloading close to a million files.

On the site, a statement says: "In case we lose the pending trial (yeah right) there will still not be any changes to the site.

" The Pirate Bay will keep operating just as always. We've been here for years and we will be here many more."

In an interview with the BBC's technology programme Click last year Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde said: "I think it's okay to copy. They get their money from so many places that the sales is just one small part."

FROM DOT.LIFE BLOG The Pirate Bay is being targeted because it so popular, so high-profile, and so flagrant in its actions Darren Waters, Technology editor, BBC News website Read more from the blog

The other three men facing charges are Carl Lundstrom, Frederik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg.

If convicted, the four men could face a maximum of two years in prison.

The charges relate to 20 music files, nine film files and four computer game files.

In the indictment, Mr Roswall said the four should pay damages of 1.2 million kronor (£90,000), the minimum amount the men profited from the illegal activity, according to the prosecution.

Plaintiffs in the case include Warner, MGM, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox Films, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI.

John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of global music body, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries, said: "The operators of The Pirate Bay have always been interested in making money, not music.

"The Pirate Bay has managed to make Sweden, normally the most law abiding of EU countries, look like a piracy haven with intellectual property laws on a par with Russia."

'Doomsday' seeds arrive in Norway

The first seeds to arrive in Norway had travelled from Nigeria

The first consignment of seeds bound for the "doomsday vault" on Svalbard has arrived in Norway.

Twenty-one boxes containing 7,000 seed samples from 36 African nations were sent by the Nigeria-based International Institute of Tropical Agriculture.

The final leg of the journey will take the seeds to the remote Arctic Island.

The vault is intended to act as insurance so that food production can be restarted anywhere on Earth after a regional or global catastrophe.

Built deep inside a mountain, the structure will eventually house a vast collection of seeds; safeguarding world crops against possible future disasters including nuclear wars and dangerous climate change.

The temperature inside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault will drop to -18C (0F) in order to preserve the seeds.

The Norwegian government is paying the $9m (£4.5m) construction costs of the vault, which will have enough space to house 4.5 million seed samples.

The seeds, weighing 330kg (730lb), are made up of varieties of domesticated and wild cowpea, maize, soybean and bambara groundnut.

"The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture genebank houses the world's largest collection of cowpeas, with over 15,000 unique varieties from 88 countries around the world," said Dr Dominique Dumet, the institute's genebank manager.

During January, other national seed banks supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) began packing and shipping duplicate collections that will be stored at Svalbard.

These included collections from Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines and Syria.

Collectively, CGIAR centres maintain 600,000 plant varieties in crop genebanks in a global effort to conserve agricultural biodiversity.

The collection and maintenance of the seeds is being co-ordinated by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which has responsibility of ensuring the "conservation of crop diversity in perpetuity".

"The seed vault is the perfect place for keeping seeds safe for centuries," said Cary Fowler, the Trust's executive director.

"At these temperatures, seeds for important crops like wheat, barley and peas can last for up to 1,000 years."

The seed vault has been built 120m (390ft) inside a mountain on Spitsbergen, one of four islands that make up Svalbard.

The site, roughly 1,000km (600 miles) north of mainland Norway, was chosen as the location for the vault because it was very remote and it also offered the level of stability required for the long-term project.

The vault is scheduled to be formally opened on 26 February.