Scientists studying pictures from Nasa’s Odyssey spacecraft have spotted what they think may be seven caves on the surface of Mars. The candidate caves are on the flanks of the Arsia Mons volcano and are of sufficient depth their floors mostly cannot be seen through the opening. The authors say that the possible discovery of caves on the Red Planet is significant
The Tasmanian Devil, a rare carnivorous marsupial found only on Australia’s southern island state of Tasmania, faces extinction in 10 to 20 years without a cure for the facial cancer now decimating the population. With half the population of this fierce, black furry animal now wiped out, leaving less than 75,000 devils, Professor Hamish McCallum at the University of Tasmania is battling to establish offshore colonies of healthy devils
Soon you could be piping digital TV around your home via power sockets. At the Cebit technology fair, German hi-tech firm Devolo is showing off home networking technology that can handle signals from a set top box. While many firms are working on ways to route data via the mains power circuits in the home, Devolo is among the first to use it to send TV signals. Further improvements to the home networking system will help it handle cable and satellite TV signals
SanDisk introduced an 8GB flash memory card for digital cameras and other devices, doubling the capacity of previous versions of the product. In addition, the company unveiled a new micromemory card for mobile phones
The government is heading back to the drawing board after a senate committee found its proposed new smartcard was likely to become an identity card. The Access Card was intended to replace the Medicare card and other benefits cards, streamlining access to a wide range of government health and welfare services. The government had explicitly ruled out its use as a national ID card amid widespread concerns that was what it would become. But in its report released last night, the standing committee on finance and public administration said the card was likely to become in effect an identity card, despite measures aimed at limiting its use
Check out this excellent My Neighbour Totoro doughnut, baked crispy fresh in the seaside town of Hakodate, Hokkaido.
As well as producing doughnuts of interest, Hakodate is home to Isoya Yuki, who enthusiastically sang the Kenshin theme song. You know, the one where her heavyweight love soon dissolves like the sugar cube, etc.
Japan’s Thanko has launched a new music headband just for runners. The VONIA is crafted with the iPod shuffle and other very small audio players in mind. A small pocket at the front holds the player and relays its sound through wires hidden inside the headband itself, preventing tangles during a run. The company has chosen to use bone conduction instead of headphones: sound transmits directly through the skull and leaves the ears free to pick up crucial audio cues from the outside world without affecting audio quality
A human rights legal group says Australia is breaching its international obligations by sending a group of asylum seekers to Nauru for processing. The Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews, today announced the transfer of more than 80 Sri Lankan men currently being held on Christmas Island. Mr Andrews says the move will deter people smugglers and potential asylum seekers from trying to reach Australia. The spokeswoman from the group Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, Eve Lester, says the Government’s policy is contrary to the United Nations convention on refugees
Thousands of Australians who use internet auction sites like eBay are facing a tax probe into their GST compliance. Online auction sites have been asked by the Australian Tax Office to provide information about sellers who turn over more than $50,000 a year
Whether YouTube suffers the same fate as Napster may depend on the wording of a nearly antique law written long before video-sharing web sites were envisioned
Future spacecraft may surf the magnetic fields of Earth and other planets, taking previously unfeasible routes around the solar system, according to a proposal funded by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts. The electrically charged craft would not need rockets or propellant of any kind. Mason Peck of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US, has received a grant to study the idea, which is based on the fact that magnetic fields exert forces on electrically charged objects. He says a satellite could charge itself up in one of two ways — either by firing a beam of charged particles into space, or simply by allowing a radioactive isotope to emit charged particles. The charged satellite would then be gently pushed by Earth’s rotating magnetic field, enabling it to change orbit and even escape to interplanetary space. Early signs suggest the idea may work — via Warren Ellis
Office workers glued to their computer screens have an increased risk of potentially fatal blood clots, a world-leading New Zealand study has found. The study, by Professor Richard Beasley of the Medical Research Institute in Wellington found that 34 per cent of patients admitted to hospital with blood clots had been seated at work for long periods
Scientists are developing an artificial vein for use in patients with circulation problems. The device, which encourages blood to flow in its natural spiralling fashion, has produced highly promising results in clinical trials. The developers hope it will offer surgeons carrying out bypass operations an alternative to relying on blood vessels taken from the patient’s body. It is hoped it could be made available to patients within a year
The British military is set to take one of its most significant steps into the digital age with the launch of the first Skynet 5 satellite. The spacecraft will deliver secure, high-bandwidth communications for UK and friendly
forces across the globe. It’s not yet the Skynet of Terminator, but how long before it becomes self aware?
Viacom says it will sue Google and YouTube for US$1 billion. Viacom, which owns MTV and Nickelodeon, says YouTube uses its shows illegally. Viacom alleges that about 160,000 unauthorised clips of its programmes have been loaded onto YouTube’s site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times. Google says it is confident
that YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders
Every year, Neil Engelman carefully collects his data, stands before his company’s board of directors and is asked the same question: What caused more outages? The lightning or the squirrels? Four of the past five years, the answer has been the squirrels, says Engelman, vice president of operations for the Lincoln Electric System in Nebraska. Nebraska is not alone. Many states are grappling with a big increase in the number of power outages caused by squirrel electrocutions. Squirrels that fry themselves on power lines and transformers cause tens of thousands of blackouts every year
Microsoft has admitted that its Live OneCare security suite has been accidentally deleting some users’ Outlook and Outlook Express e-mails. According to postings on Microsoft’s OneCare forum, erasures have been caused when the antivirus program finds a virus in an e-mail attachment. Instead of then quarantining that single e-mail, users have reported that entire .pst or .dbx files — the personal folder where non-Exchange Server users’ messages and other details are kept — have been quarantined or, in some cases, even deleted
The European Union’s consumer chief has hit out at Apple’s bundling of its iPod music players and its iTunes online music store
Plants can do it: they simply grab carbon dioxide out of the air and covert it into biomass. In this process, known as photosynthesis, the plants use light as their energy source. Chemists would also like to be able to use CO2 as a carbon source for their synthetic reactions, but it doesn’t work just like that. A team headed by Markus Antonietti at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces has now taken an important step toward this goal. They have successfully activated CO2 for use in a chemical reaction by using a special new type of metal-free catalyst: graphitic carbon nitride
Mayan priests will purify a sacred Guatemalan archaeological site to eliminate bad spirits
after President Bush visits next week — via The Pagan Prattle
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