Scientific understanding of what makes a flea jump and what makes a fruit fly tick has led to the creation of a new rubber-like material. Scientists in Queensland have developed a polymer-based on an elastic protein called resilin, which may eventually have medical and industrial applications. It is the first time the substance has been reproduced in a laboratory and it is hoped it could one day be used to replace spinal discs in people
Dutch police has nabbed three men, aged 19, 22 and 27, who used the toxbot trojan to create a botnet of over 100,000 machines. The trio conducted a DDoS attack against an unnamed US company in an extortion attempt, as well as using phishing tactics to hijack PayPal and eBay accounts
Black magic may have driven a Cambodian couple, Chheng Chhorn, 46, and Srun Yoeung, 37, to attack their 12-year-old child before dawn on Thursday while she was still asleep, biting off her thumb nails and a small part of her nose to drink her blood, said Keo Norea Phy, a police official in Kampong Cham province where the incident occurred — via Warren Ellis
A Chinese man who raised bears to tap them for their bile, prized as a traditional medicine in Asia, has been killed and eaten by his animals
Apple has unveiled its long-rumoured video iPod, as well as a new iMac and an updated version of iTunes that lets users buy music videos, TV shows and movies
A startup called Splashpower hopes to be able to wirelessly recharge all of our handheld devices. They have a working prototype that already recharges an iPod Mini and a cell phone. Now we can look forward to yet another way to get brain cancer — via Slashdot
Google produced a Cheat Sheet to help people use the various operators and commands, such as ~ and site:. This has inspired Nancy Blachman, author of the independent Google Guide, to create an Advanced Operators Cheat Sheet — via Onlineblog
A Melbourne man believes he has proof that a long-standing myth about the existence of big cats in the Victorian countryside is true. Kurt Engel of Noble Park shot dead what is believed to be a black puma near Sale in East Gippsland in June. Experts are conducting tests to confirm the identity of the big cat. Interesting that he kept quiet about it for so long and only has a dogy photograph and a tail as his supposed evidence
The Bush administration pledged to veto legislation banning the torture of prisoners by US troops after an overwhelming and almost unprecedented revolt by loyalist congressmen. The mutiny was the latest setback for an administration facing an increasingly independent and bloody-minded legislature. But it also marked a key moment in Congress’s campaign to curtail the huge powers it has granted the White House since 2001 in its war against terrorism
Aardman Animations, the company behind Wallace and Gromit, has lost 30 years of its history after its Victorian warehouse in Bristol went up in flames
The retarded monkey boy has claimed he was told by god to invade Iraq and attack Osama bin Laden’s stronghold of Afghanistan as part of a divine mission to bring peace to the Middle East, security for Israel, and a state for the Palestinians. The President made the assertion during his first meeting with Palestinian leaders in June 2003, according to a BBC series which will be broadcast this month
Fairtrade coffee, which up to now has mostly been marketed by small groups trying to give impoverished farmers a bigger cut of the pie than food giants like Nestle, lands in British supermarkets with a Nestle brand in two weeks’ time
A great white shark has astounded scientists by swimming from South Africa to Australia and back in a journey that sheds new light on the murky world of the ocean’s most feared predator
The British Library has made available 14 great books on its web site. One of them is a 1508 notebook by Leonardo Da Vinci containing short treatises, notes and drawings of a wide range of subjects from mechanics to the moon. The site allows you to view the original manuscript written in Leonardo’s own handwriting
Mark Latham’s offer of $800 million compensation to Tasmania to protect Tasmania’s old growth forests was trumped by a secret $4 million to a forestry union outfit 3 days before the last election
Micro-organisms commonly found floating in oceans might someday be reborn as components in incredibly complex computer circuits. The single-celled algae, called diatoms, live in water and assemble a shell, or frustule, of silica by converting nutrients and light. They can adopt an incredible diversity of shapes — from simple geometric structures like triangles and squares to extremely complex 3D constructs with thousands of individual pores
A village council in eastern India has fined two brothers for keeping a pet ghost. Iswar and Haripada Murmu, of Akshaypur in West Bengal, were accused of owning a ghost after one of their wives died. An exorcist summoned by villagers claimed the brothers’ pet ghost was responsible for a recent outbreak of disease in the locality
. Village elders said they were bringing evil to the village and fined them the equivalent of £360 — via Warren Ellis
Cultural monopolists desperately want us to believe that without copyright we would have no artistic creations and therefore no entertainment. That is nonsense. We would have more, and more diverse ones.
A world without copyright is easy to imagine. The level playing field of cultural production — a market accessible for everyone — would once again be restored. A world without copyright would offer the guarantee of a good income to many artists, and would protect the public domain of knowledge and creativity. And members of the public would get what they are entitled to: a surprisingly rich and varied menu of artistic alternatives
A decades-long mystery surrounding the rumoured existence of a Maya city has reportedly ended with the discovery of the city in the jungles of Guatemala
The Ig Nobel awards for 2005 were presented at Harvard University
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