A new luxury fibre industry could soon open up in Australia using fibres not from sheep but from rabbits. CSIRO’s Livestock Industries is investigating the establishment of a potential new angora rabbit industry in Australia
The drive to improve the lives of laboratory animals is having an unforeseen effect. Enriching the living conditions of rats, mice and other animals changes both their behaviour and their physiology, new studies show. This will have an increasingly important effect on the outcome of scientific experiments, including drugs trial
Disease-causing microbes can effectively be eliminated from recycled water by storing it underground, new research by CSIRO scientists has found
Science fiction fans know that many seemingly impossible technologies materialise years later — mobile phones, personal computers and of course, human spaceflight, being three examples. However this may not to be the case for warp drive, the idea of travelling through space faster than the speed of light
From the fun-things-to-do-with-magnets department comes the Home-made Gauss Rifle. It requires a wooden ruler with a groove down the middle to serve as the rail, steel balls that can roll down the groove to use as projectiles, and magnets to store and redirect energy
Microsoft’s software monopoly is running out of time, says open-source guru Eric Raymond, and he’s got a precise figure for when the company’s position will no longer be sustainable: $350
DNA molecules are prime candidates for helping humans make microscopic machines because they have a long history of assembling things on the molecular scale. Researchers at New York University have taken a significant step forward in being able to instruct artificial DNA molecules to move in specific ways with a method that allows certain portions of DNA to bind to each other, and then release. This reversible binding method allows for control of the shape of a DNA molecule, or machine
Antimatter atoms, among the most elusive matter in the Universe, may have been captured for the first time. Researchers on the ATRAP experiment at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics near Geneva, think they have made and stored thousands of antiatoms in a particle trap
Kidnapping amorous males who hold a sexual monopoly over their peers may be the key to saving some endangered species
Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies have developed a transparent aluminium tile made from aluminium oxide pellets baked at 1200°C. The material is very hard, and could be used as bullet-proof windows
Researchers in the US think they have solved a puzzle dating back to the days of the 17th century Dutch scientist, astronomer and inventor Christiaan Huygens
Astronauts on board the International Space Station could soon spend their spare time learning the elaborate rituals of the Japanese tea ceremony. Officials at Japan’s National Space Development Agency are planning to include a 13 square foot tea-room in Japan’s section of the ISS, possibly in the Kibo laboratory module, scheduled for launch in 2004
Car seats that wake up drowsy drivers, bed sheets that monitor your health, socks that let you know when you are about to do a tendon, vests that trigger an emergency beacon if you are dying of exposure — that’s what an eclectic mix of researchers spent last Friday discussing as part of an Electronic Textiles workshop in Geelong
Scientists fear they could soon have to ask official permission to publish research papers as the UK Government drafts laws that give it the power to vet their work
Astronomers have found a weird double-star system — a super-fast spinning pulsar whose gravity has deformed its companion star into a giant red teardrop
During a recent quest to hunt down a 17-year-old copy of the National Geographic, I ran into problems contacting the Single Copy Sales department due to bugs in their recently revamped e-mail system. So I’m greatly appreciative to Lisa Walker for both persevering with my continual queries and hunting down an old office copy for me — and then sending it to the other side of the planet gratis
Anyone taking part in the SETI@home rip-off to find the cure for Cancer may unexpectedly find that their processor time has been hijacked by the Anthrax project without their knowledge or permission
What do you get if you cross a magnetic space sail with a rapid-fire machine gun? If you do your math right, you might end up with something like the SailBeam interstellar space ship
Despite being the world’s lingua franca, English is the most difficult European language to learn to read. Children learning other languages master the basic elements of literacy within a year, but British kids take two-and-a-half years to reach the same point.
The dream of teleporting atoms and molecules — and maybe even larger objects — has become a real possibility for the first time. The advance is thanks to physicists who have suggested a method that in theory could be used to entangle absolutely any kind of particle
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