Mars missions encounter hitch

29 June 2011 Last updated at 17:38 GMT By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News The 2016 orbiter would look for trace gases in the atmosphere of Mars US and European efforts to send joint missions to Mars have encountered yet another hitch.

A letter from Washington formally committing to combined ventures at the planet this decade was expected in Paris this week, but has not arrived.

It makes it harder for Europe to authorise its industry to start the next phase of building on an orbiter to hunt for Methane in Mars' atmosphere.

Industry has warned that time is running short to complete construction.

The delay in giving the commitment is understood to relate to the US space agency's (Nasa) difficulty in organising its finances for the multi-billion-dollar ventures, which also includes a big rover to search for traces of life - past or present.

Member states of the European Space Agency (Esa) want the assurance that the Americans will keep their side of the bargain, particularly on the rover, before they write a cheque to industry to start cutting metal on flight hardware.

Esa's Industrial Policy Committee was this week supposed to release industry to begin that work, but discussions on the matter will now take a different shape at the IPC's current meeting because the letter from Nasa has failed to materialise.

Known in Europe as the ExoMars project, the joint venture between the agencies comprises two separate missions.

The first, in 2016, is an orbiter to track down the sources of methane and other trace gases recently detected in Mars' atmosphere. The presence of methane is intriguing because its likely origin is either present-day life or geological activity.

Confirmation of either would be a major discovery.

In 2018, the agencies then plan to send their large rover to the Red Planet - perhaps targeted at one of the most interesting sources of methane to investigate further.

The 2016 satellite would act as the surface vehicle's data-relay station to get its pictures and other information back to Earth.

Industry says the timetable for construction, particularly for the orbiter, is tight if launch dates are to be met; and that it cannot wait much longer to start fabrication of key components.

"We are already compressing the uncompressible", was how one industry official described the situation to the BBC at last week's Paris Air Show.

For followers of European space affairs, the ExoMars initiative has been a long, drawn-out affair. It was originally approved as a concept by ministers in 2005, but then went through several iterations as scientists and engineers struggled to match their ambitions for the project to the funds available.

A decision to combine efforts with the Americans was taken when they too encountered budget pressures on their Mars Programme.

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German police vulture falls flat

29 June 2011 Last updated at 15:28 GMT By Stephen Evans BBC News, Berlin The vultures' habits had seemed like a perfect fit for the job of detective Police in Lower Saxony, Germany, who decided to teach a vulture to sniff out corpses of missing people, have hit difficulties two months into training.

Reasoning that it could fly over miles of wasteland, then descend where it found a missing person, they had wanted to fit it with a transmitter.

But it transpires that Sherlock, as the bird is known, is not very interested.

On top of that, it is shy, confuses human with animal remains and actually prefers to walk, Spiegel magazine says.

Sherlock has been in training in the Walsrode bird park on Lueneburg Heath near Hanover, along with two vulture side-kicks also named after famous fictional detectives, Columbo and Miss Marple.

Shy bird

It had seemed such a great idea. What if the police had sniffer dogs that could fly? Dogs do not have wings, they realised, but birds do.

But according to Spiegel: "Sherlock's success has been limited.

"While he can locate a stinking burial shroud, which the police gave the bird park to use for training purposes and which is clearly marked with a yellow plastic cup, Sherlock doesn't approach the shroud by air.

"He prefers to travel by foot."

Furthermore, the bird is yet to perform outside the familiar confines of the zoo.

"The bird is naturally anxious, and he would hide in the woods or bolt," according to his trainer.

The vulture also finds it hard to distinguish between dead people and dead animals, which is a problem in the vast heathland of that part of Germany.

'Time-saver'

When the idea was unveiled two months ago, there was much fuss in the media.

The police explained they had got the idea from a documentary on birds - reportedly a BBC wildlife documentary.

"It was a colleague of mine who got the idea from watching a nature programme," policeman Rainer Herrmann told the media proudly.

"If it works, time could be saved when looking for dead bodies because the birds can cover a much vaster area than sniffer dogs or humans."

Apparently, birds generally rely mostly on sight to locate food but vultures like Sherlock have a keen sense of smell.

The police decided on turkey vultures, which are indigenous to the Americas but which also live in the zoos of Europe.

They are not pretty with their bright bald heads but they do have an ability to locate carrion if they want to.

Sherlock does not - or not if it involves too much effort.

At the time the scheme was launched, the idea was that Holmes would be the senior detective teaching Miss Marple and Columbo.

"But the young ones can't do anything besides fight with each other," Spiegel quoted a trainer as saying.

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Smart meter savings 'uncertain'

29 June 2011 Last updated at 22:22 GMT Smart meters will mean the end of meter readings as the information will be available remotely Uncertainty surrounds the extent to which householders will change their behaviour when new smart meters are introduced, a report has concluded.

By 2020, every home in Britain will be fitted with a smart meter - a device that shows exactly how much gas and electricity is being used.

The Department of Energy estimates that the meters will help the average customer save ?23 a year.

But the National Audit Office said current evidence left this in doubt.

Estimates

Installation of the devices has already begun in some areas, in the hope that householders will be more savvy about when they use electricity or gas and the cost of energy use becomes clearer.

They are also set to bring an end to estimated bills, because the technology sends back an accurate meter reading to the energy company every day.

The benefits are estimated to equate to ?18.6bn over the next 20 years.

But the National Audit Office (NAO) report said that lower bills would come about only if these savings were passed on to customers from the energy companies.

Various security concerns have been raised regarding the technology, including the amount of personal data held on the devices.

The NAO said more work was needed on the security of the system.

Budget

The initial cost to the taxpayer was also expected to be exceeded, according to Margaret Hodge, who chairs the Common's Public Accounts Committee.

Continue reading the main story

Government must take a hands-on approach to keep costs under control and ensure that consumers see the benefits of this billion-pound initiative”

End Quote Richard Lloyd Which? chief executive The budget for the project is ?11.3bn, but most of this is borne by the energy suppliers who will pay for the installation costs of the meters. Householders will see an extra ?6 a year added to bills by 2015 to pay for this.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change will pick up the bill for "programme management" and "consumer engagement".

"Smart meters could help us all cut our energy consumption but government's track record on delivering large programmes is patchy at best," said Mrs Hodge.

"At the moment the estimated cost is ?11.3bn but all our experience suggests this budget will be blown."

Consumer groups have urged the government to keep these costs under control.

"With clear benefits for industry and estimated cost savings to consumers of only ?23 per year, government must take a hands-on approach to keep costs under control and ensure that consumers see the benefits of this billion-pound initiative," said Richard Lloyd, chief executive of Which?.

Zoe McLeod, from watchdog Consumer Focus, said: "This is a welcome spotlight on the cost of this scheme and the importance on getting it right. Smart meters have significant potential benefits for consumers but only if the risks are addressed properly.

"Consumers will end up footing the bill for this multi-billion-pound scheme. Success will be measured by whether it delivers real improvements, such as helping people to cut their energy use, switch more easily and get better customer service.

"The government cannot assume that the competitive market alone will deliver for customers. Government needs a detailed strategy and should produce an annual report on the costs and the benefits delivered, to make sure all consumers get value for money and to provide trust and transparency."

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Bug makes record noise with penis

30 June 2011 Last updated at 01:51 By Ella Davies Reporter, BBC Nature Tiny bugs make huge sounds with a surprising organ A tiny water boatman is the loudest animal on Earth relative to its body size, a study has revealed.

Scientists from France and Scotland recorded the aquatic animal "singing" at up to 99.2 decibels, the equivalent of listening to a loud orchestra play while sitting in the front row.

The insect makes the sound by rubbing its penis against its abdomen in a process known as "stridulation".

Researchers say the song is a courtship display performed to attract a mate.

Micronecta scholtzi are freshwater insects measuring just 2mm that are common across Europe.

In a study published in the journal PLoS One, the scientists discovered that the small animals make a mighty sound.

The team of biologists and engineering experts recorded the insects using specialist underwater microphones.

On average, the songs of M. scholtzi reached 78.9 decibels, comparable to a passing freight train.

"We were very surprised. We first thought that the sound was coming from larger aquatic species such as a Sigara species [of] lesser water boatmen," said engineering expert Dr James Windmill from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

"When we identified without any doubt the sound source, we spent a lot of time making absolutely sure that our recordings of the sounds were calibrated correctly."

Continue reading the main story Stridulation is the act of rubbing two body parts together to produce a soundResonating sounds are made when a ridge is rubbed across a finely ridged surfaceIt is most commonly associated with grasshoppers and crickets but some beetles, bugs and even spiders are known to chirp, chirrup and hiss in this wayOnly one species of mammal, the streaked tenrec, is known to stridulate by rubbing its quills togetherDr Windmill explained that the reason the insects don't deafen us is down to the bug's underwater lifestyle.

Although 99% of the sound is lost when transferring from water to air, the songs were still loud enough to be audible to the human ear.

"The song is so loud that a person walking along the bank can actually hear these tiny creatures singing from the bottom of the river," said Dr Windmill.

The majority of the loudest animals on Earth are also the biggest, with blue whale songs reaching 188 dB and elephants' rumbling calls measuring 117 dB.

Although remarkable acoustic signals are made by a range of invertebrates, including the miniature cricket and preying mantis, and by large mammals, none compare to M. scholtzi once body size is taken into account.

"If you scale the sound level they produce against their body size, Micronecta scholtzi are the loudest animals on Earth," said Dr Windmill.

Researchers believe that sexual selection could be the reason why the insects' songs reach such high amplitude.

"We assume that this could be the result of a runaway selection," biologist and co-author Dr Jerome Sueur from the Museum of Natural History, Paris, told the BBC.

"Males try to compete to have access to females and then try to produce a song as loud as possible potentially scrambling the song of competitors."

Dr Sueur explained that the competition could have exaggerated the volume of males' songs over time.

In many insects, the song volume is limited because predators would hear them, but observations suggest that M. scholtzi lack auditory predators.

Modifications

To produce the intense sound, the water boatmen "stridulate" by rubbing a ridge on their penis across the ridged surface of their abdomen.

"There is at least another one insect producing sound with its genitalia. This is a pyrallid moth, Syntonarcha iriastis, that uses highly modified genitalia to produce ultrasonic signals," explained Dr Sueur.

The tiny bugs belong to a family known in the UK as lesser water boatmen

"Insects seem to be able to use any part of their body to generate sound. Some of them use their wings, others their legs, abdomen, head, wings, thorax etcetera."

What makes M. scholtzi extraordinary is that the area they use to create sound only measures about 50 micrometres across, roughly the width of a human hair.

"We really don't know how they make such a loud sound using such a small area," said Dr Windmill.

Without any obvious adaptations to amplify the sound, the question of how the animals physically make such a loud call remains a mystery.

"These very small bugs create sound at very high level, and it could be very useful for future ultrasonic systems to learn how they do that," said Dr Windmill.

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'Monster' driving cosmic beacon

30 June 2011 Last updated at 10:12 GMT By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News Quasar impression: The giant black hole shreds the gas and dust in the disc that surrounds it, making this material shine out across the cosmos Astronomers have spied a monster black hole - the brightest object yet seen in the early Universe.

Detected by a UK telescope in Hawaii, the hole is seen as it was a mere 770 million years after the Big Bang.

This means its light has taken an astonishing 12.9 billion years to reach us here on Earth.

Scientists report the discovery in the journal Nature. They say it will help them understand better the conditions that existed in the early cosmos.

It should also provide new insights on how so-called super-massive black holes come into being.

As has become clear from a number of recent observations, these giants seem to have established themselves very early on in the Universe.

"Technically, this object is what we call a quasar," explained Dr Daniel Mortlock, the lead author of the Nature paper from Imperial College London.

"The super-massive black hole itself is dark but it has a disc of gas or dust around it that has got so hot that it will outshine an entire galaxy of stars."

As bright as it was in the early Universe, the object appears now to us on Earth as just a faint dot in the infrared.

It glows in this part of the electromagnetic spectrum because the brilliant ultraviolet light with which it once shone has been stretched to longer wavelengths on its passage through the expanding cosmos.

We detect ULAS J1120+0641 on Earth as a faint dot in the infrared part of the light spectrum

The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) has been trawling the sky looking for such light sources, knowing that any detection is likely to be a very distant object.

The newly identified quasar has been designated ULAS J1120+0641. It is not the most distant object seen in the Universe - that record probably goes to gamma-ray burst (GRB), the light from an exploded star. But the quasar is hundreds of times brighter than the GRB, and certainly bright enough to allow scientists to start to probe the object and its surroundings in some detail.

Theory holds that the very young cosmos would have been filled with neutral hydrogen. Then, as the first stars burned bright, they would have "fried" this neutral gas, ripping electrons from protons to produce the diffuse intergalactic plasma we detect between nearby stars today.

The transition between these periods is dubbed the "epoch of re-ionization", and is considered to be a milestone in cosmic history and astronomers are very keen to tie down the timing of when it occurred.

The light from ULAS J1120+0641 displays the characteristic signature of neutral gas, indicating that, at 770 million years after the Big Bang, the process of re-ionization had some way to go before the process was complete.

The UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) is sited on a mountain top in Hawaii

Dr Mortlock told BBC News: "This is the first time we have seen a quasar that we are sure is sitting in a significantly neutral Universe - it might be 10%, it might be 50% of the hydrogen is neutral - but all the other ones we've seen, even a 100 million years later, had a fraction of the neutral gas we see in our quasar. Others we've detected had more like 1% or 0.1% of neutral hydrogen. So we see this quasar before the epoch of re-ionization has ended."

What is a puzzle is the scale of the black hole driving this quasar. It has a mass two billion times that of the Sun.

Its detection is one of a number lately that have indicated the presence many super-massive objects in the early cosmos. Scientists are struggling to explain how these objects could have evolved so big, so fast.

"It is safe to say that the existence of this quasar will be giving some theorists sleepless nights," observed Chris Willott from the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre in a News and Views article in Nature.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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Snacking clue to obesity epidemic

29 June 2011 Last updated at 10:50 GMT By Helen Briggs Health editor, BBC News website Foods like pizza are energy dense Snacking and super sizing are two of the dieter's worst enemies, research suggests.

The average daily calorie intake in the US has increased by almost a third in 30 years, reaching 2,374 kilocalories.

The influence of bigger portion sizes and excessive snacking outweighs the shift towards high-calorie foods, say experts.

Focusing on reducing how much and how often people eat could help tackle obesity, they report in PLoS Medicine.

Obesity levels have risen sharply in many Western countries since the 1970s. In the US, where the study was carried out, a third of all adults - more than 72 million people - are now categorised as obese.

Continue reading the main story

...for those trying to control their weight, it is important to manage both how much and how often they eat.”

End Quote Dr Aine O'Connor British Nutrition Foundation A team from the University of North Carolina analysed data from food surveys carried out in the seventies, eighties, nineties and the last decade. The surveys record all food and drink a person consumes over a 24-hour period. The average daily energy intake of a US citizen increased from 1,803 kcal in 1977-78 to 2,374 kcal in 2003-06. In the last decade of the study alone, the average daily calorie intake went up by 229 kcal.

Several factors are involved in energy intake - the number of calories (energy) in a specific amount of food (energy density), portion size and how many meals and snacks a day eaten. The researchers say that while all of these have gone up, increases in the number of eating occasions and portion size seem to account for most of the change.

They suggest efforts to prevent obesity should focus on reducing the number of snacks and meals a day as well as portion size.

Continue reading the main story In terms of nutrition, values are often given for the number of kilocalories in a food but referred to simply as caloriesThe recommended daily calorie intake is 2,000 for women, and 2,500 for men (NHS Choices)Factors that influence energy intake include portion size, energy density and the number of meals, snacks and drinks consumed each day"These findings suggest a new focus for efforts to reduce energy imbalances in US adults," write Kiyah Duffey and Barry Popkin of the University of North Carolina in the journal PloS Medicine.

Commenting on the paper, Dr Aine O'Connor, a scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation said: "Many factors influence total energy intake that can lead to [being] overweight and obesity but it is possible that having more eating occasions through the day, for example by frequent snacking, would increase calorie consumption and so lead to weight gain.

"This study also looked at portion size and studies have shown that having larger portions of food leads to an increased intake.

"The researchers were based in the US, but many of the factors causing the obesity epidemic there are mirrored in the UK and, for those trying to control their weight, it is important to manage both how much and how often they eat."

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Jellyfish force nuclear shutdown in Scotland

30 June 2011 Last updated at 10:01 GMT By David Miller BBC Scotland environment and science correspondent The jellyfish have been seen in large numbers in the sea at Torness nuclear power station Both reactors at the Torness nuclear power station have been shut down after huge numbers of jellyfish were found in the sea water entering the plant.

The jellyfish were found obstructing cooling water filters on Tuesday.

The East Lothian plant's operator, EDF Energy, said the shutdown was a precautionary measure and there was never any danger to the public.

A clean-up operation is under way, but it is understood it could be next week before Torness is operational again.

Torness has two Advanced Gas Cooled Reactors but also relies on supplies of sea water to ensure it operates safely.

It has filters which are designed to prevent seaweed and marine animals entering the cooling system.

Continue reading the main story

There are no radiological aspects associated with this event and there has been no impact to the environment”

End Quote EDF spokesman If these screens become clogged, the reactors are shut down to comply with safety procedures.

An EDF spokesman told BBC Scotland: "At no time was there any danger to the public. There are no radiological aspects associated with this event and there has been no impact to the environment."

Staff at the plant took the decision to shut down the reactors on Tuesday afternoon.

It is not known why there are so many jellyfish in the area.

Water temperatures along the east coast of Scotland have been relatively normal, but it is thought higher than average temperatures elsewhere in the North Sea may be a factor.

Operations at nuclear power plants in Japan have been disrupted by large numbers of jellyfish in recent years.

Earlier this month, an Atlantic Grey Seal was rescued from EDF Energy's Hinkley Point nuclear power station in Somerset after it got trapped in the inflow area chasing fish. The plant's operations were not affected.

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Final shuttle launch date fixed

28 June 2011 Last updated at 21:41 GMT By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News The final Atlantis mission will have a crew of four, led by Chris Ferguson (far left) The last launch of a US space shuttle will take place on Friday 8 July.

The Atlantis ship has the honour of closing out the 30-year orbiter programme and will lift off at 1126 Florida time (1526 GMT).

Up to 750,000 people are expected to line the roads and beaches around the Kennedy Space Center, all eager to witness a piece of history.

The launch date was fixed by US space agency managers on Tuesday following a review of mission preparations.

They passed as fit to fly a new fuel valve on one of the vehicle's main engines. The old valve was suspected to have a leak and was changed.

And inspections ordered on support beams on the ship's big orange external fuel tank found no issues of concern. Cracks in these structures were the cause of a major delay on a previous shuttle mission.

Four astronauts will ride Atlantis to orbit - Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim.

Their 12-day sortie will take them to the International Space Station (ISS), where they will deliver more than 3.5 tonnes (8,000lb) of supplies - including a year's worth of food. It will give the US space agency some room to play with as it looks to introduce a commercial cargo re-supply service over the next 12 months.

"This flight is incredibly important to space station; the cargo that is coming up is really mandatory," said Nasa's Associate Administrator for Space Operations, Bill Gerstenmaier.

A shuttle would normally fly with six or seven crew members onboard, but the number has been reduced for this final flight because there is no orbiter left on standby to go and rescue them should they to get into trouble.

In the event of Atlantis sustaining serious damage on lift-off, similar to the ill-fated Columbia ship in 2003, the astronauts would take refuge on the ISS until they could all return to Earth in Russian Soyuz capsules over a 10-month period.

On its return from space, Atlantis will be put on public display at the Kennedy Space Center visitor complex

The 8 July ascent will be the 135th shuttle launch and the 33rd of Atlantis.

In total, 355 individuals will have flown 852 times on those 135 missions since the very first shuttle flight on 12 April, 1981.

The five orbiters used over the course of the programme have flown 864,401,200km (537,114,016 miles) - a distance roughly similar to travelling from the Earth to the Sun and back three times.

Atlantis will add a further 6.5 million km (four million miles) to that total.

Reflecting on the significance of a final shuttle mission, Commander Ferguson said recently: "I don't think that the full magnitude of the moment will really hit us until the wheels have stopped on the runway.

"I'm not sure words will really be able to capture for the crew and for the entire shuttle workforce just how much the shuttle programme has meant to us for the last 30 years."

It has been an emotional few months for everyone connected with the programme - not least because many shuttle workers have lost their jobs in the wind-down. But Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach said everyone would stay focused on getting the 8 July launch done properly.

"Everyone that touches the vehicle is a true professional at the Kennedy Space Center, and throughout the programme," he told reporters.

"With that professionalism and their dedication to the programme over many, many years comes a commitment to do the job right. When the folks are doing their work on this amazing machine, I don't worry about it - I know they're going to do their job as perfectly as they have in the past."

Discovery was the first ship to complete its career in March, followed by Endeavour which landed one last time on 1 June.

The vehicles are all being retired to museums. Atlantis will end its days at the Kennedy Space Center visitor complex.

The final crew of space shuttle Discovery talk about their mission in March

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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Happy orangutans live for longer

29 June 2011 Last updated at 07:34 By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC Nature The happiest orangutans lived up to 11 years longer than the least happy apes Happier orangutans are more likely to live for longer, according to a study.

A team of researchers in the UK and US devised a method to measure the happiness, or subjective well-being, of captive orangutans.

In a follow-up study seven years later, the scientists found that happier primates were much more likely still to be alive.

The findings are published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

The team, led by Dr Alex Weiss from the University of Edinburgh, asked the people who worked closely with each captive orangutan to participate in the study. He asked the keepers and carers to complete a questionnaire about individual animals they knew well; assessing the orangutans' personalities and attitude.

"The assessment was modelled on [established] methods of assessing human well-being," Dr Weiss explained to BBC Nature.

The questionnaire posed four key questions, including how much time the orangutan in question spent "happy, contented and enjoying itself". It also asked the human participants to imagine how happy they would be if they were that orangutan for a week.

By working out a happiness score for each of nearly 200 animals, the team was able to see how happiness influenced the orangutans' lives. Seven years later, when they revisited the study, they could see a clear association between happiness and longevity.

Fitter, happier Continue reading the main story

We might be able to extend life by more closely monitoring the health of an animal that seems unhappy”

End Quote Dr Alex Weiss University of Edinburgh Professor Richard Byrne, a primate expert from the University of St Andrews who was not involved in this study said that "the findings were clear".

"[The team has] worked out that the difference between an orangutan being rated as very happy, compared to very unhappy, equated to 11 additional years of life-expectancy," said Professor Byrne.

But, he continued, "the authors rightly point out that the data don't tell us whether some subtle sign of health or illness makes an orangutan act more or less happy, or if its the reverse - that something intrinsic to the individual orangutan, which shows up externally as happiness or sadness to us, predisposes the individual to be more likely to stay healthy or get ill."

But even without fully understanding whether happiness causes long life or if better health causes happiness, the researchers hope their results will be used to improve and extend the lives of endangered orangutans.

"[In captivity], we might be able to extend life by more closely monitoring the health of an animal that seems unhappy," explained Dr Weiss.

He also thinks the work could be usefully applied to wild orangutans.

"There are lots of sanctuaries that are temporary homes for animals that are rescued having been captured by traders and hunters," Dr Weiss told BBC Nature.

"These happiness or well-being measures could be used to work out if an animal is ready to be reintroduced into the wild.

"I'd love to see this questionnaire being used more broadly."

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'Filaments' hold dark matter test

29 June 2011 Last updated at 10:40 GMT By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News The filaments can be seen as radio emission radiating away from the galactic centre Unexplained "filaments" of radio-wave emission close to our galaxy's centre may hold proof of the existence of dark matter, researchers have said.

Dark matter is believed to make up most of the mass of our Universe, but it has yet to be definitively spotted.

A report now suggests the filaments' emission arises from dark matter particles crashing into each other.

However, the work, posted to the Arxiv repository, requires extensive further experiments to support or refute it.

The filaments have been something of a mystery to astronomers since they were first discovered in the 1980s.

They are known to be regions of high magnetic fields, and they emit radio waves of high frequency - some of them with striking intensity.

"There's a long literature about these objects, and there have been some ideas as to what might generate their emission - but frankly no one really knows," said Dan Hooper, an astrophysicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in the US and co-author of the paper, which is still under review by academics.

One explanation for this emission would be what is called synchrotron radiation, which arises when charged particles are accelerated in a magnetic field. There are several ideas that could account for the emission which do not invoke dark matter - so called "astrophysical" mechanisms.

'Natural explanation'

Now, Dan Hooper and his colleagues suggest that electrons - created when high-energy dark matter particles smash into each other - could be the what gives rise to the synchrotron radiation detected here on Earth.

He credits co-author Tim Linden for coming up with the idea, which he said "can explain a lot of the different features that are observed" in the filaments' emission - something he said more prosaic "astrophysical" explanations could not claim.

"One thing it explains that the astrophysical possibilities don't is that the filaments that are closer to the galactic centre are brighter than those that are farther away," Dr Hooper told BBC News. "We would say that's because there's more dark matter as you come closer to the galactic centre - it provides a natural explanation for that."

Continue reading the main story Charged particles tend to speed up in an electric field, defined as an electric potential - or voltage - spread over a distanceOne electron volt (eV) is the energy gained by a single electron as it accelerates through a potential of one voltIt is the unit of choice for particle physics in astronomy and here on EarthAs such, it is used for particle accelerators, which speed particles up through very high electric potentialsThe Large Hadron Collider, for example, can reach beam energies up to several trillion eV, or teraelectronvolts (TeV)In the model that the team has developed, the electrons in all the filaments that were studied should have a high energy - between five and 10 billion electron volts (GeV).

Dr Hooper said:"The question is: why would all of these filaments which are different astrophysically, contain different stuff, located in different places - all sorts of different properties - all have electrons with that much energy?

"In the dark matter explanation, that's easy - dark matter is the same everywhere."

'Severe conflict'

Dr Hooper has also published papers recently suggesting that dark matter particles of the same energies fit with recent results from the Fermi space telescope (in an article in Physics Letters B) and with efforts to detect dark matter on Earth in so-called "direct detection" experiments (in an as-yet unpublished paper on Arxiv).

"That's definitely one of the strengths of this model; the results seem promising," said Sukanya Chakrabarti, an astrophysicist from the University of California, Berkeley.

However, theoretical models of a substance that has never been detected necessarily require a number of educated guesses and estimates - guesses that could radically affect whether or not a given theory stands up.

"When you do these kind of 'indirect detection' experiments, there are many parameters that go into your model," Dr Chakrabarti told BBC News. "All that stuff that's not known - it's hard to do a study of all these and convince yourself of all mechanisms [that lead to the emission]."

Troy Porter, an astrophysicist from Stanford University, said that dark matter particles of energies as high as 10 GeV are "already in severe conflict with the recent [preliminary and as-yet unpublished] results reported by the Fermi-LAT collaboration at the Rome Fermi symposium for an analysis of nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxies".

The results from detections in underground experiments on Earth are also not widely agreed to point to a dark matter explanation, but Dr Hooper said forthcoming results from the Cresst experiment in Italy will lend further credence to his team's theory.

What will resolve these issues in the case of the filaments are simply more observations using more radio telescopes.

"Many of these filaments have only limited data available about them," said Dr Hooper. "I hope this paper inspires radio astronomers to look more carefully at these objects."

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Auditors fault EU farm payments

29 June 2011 Last updated at 13:53 GMT A farm near Rennes: France gets the biggest portion of EU agricultural subsidies The EU's main audit body says agricultural subsidies - the biggest item in the EU budget - often go to people who do little or no farming.

A new report by the European Court of Auditors complains of deficiencies in the Single Payment Scheme (SPS), which distributed about 29bn euros (?26bn) of subsidies in 2009.

It says payments "have become divorced from current farming conditions".

The EU is considering how to reform its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The auditors have made various recommendations to the European Commission aimed at improving the SPS - the biggest area of spending in the CAP.

They say the SPS ought to direct aid to "active" farmers and provide more balanced funding so that a small number of big landowners no longer get the lion's share.

They also call for clearer definitions of land eligible for subsidies and of farming activities.

The report complains that the 17 EU countries applying the SPS use about 20 different variants of the payment scheme, making it too complex.

Absentee farmers

The SPS does not operate in 10 EU countries, which joined the EU in 2004 and 2007. All 10, except Cyprus, are former communist countries and they use a different system of farm support, called SAPS.

The auditors say the SPS has encouraged farmers to respond better to market demand and has benefited EU agriculture as a whole.

But they say the way the scheme's beneficiaries were defined "permitted persons or entities not, or only marginally, engaged in an agricultural activity to benefit from SPS payments".

In some cases landowners have carried on receiving the payments even though their land is worked by tenant farmers who do not get the subsidy.

In the UK the auditors found some individual beneficiaries receiving up to 1m euros annually or even more in SPS aid without having any agricultural activity on their land.

The report also highlights examples of non-agricultural land qualifying for SPS payments in France, Italy and Spain.

The European Commission has said EU farm spending should no longer be based on previous subsidy levels for farmers.

But the commission believes subsidies are still needed to protect Europe's food supplies and rural diversity. The proposals are contained in an EU blueprint for farming beyond 2013.

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China and UK strike space deal

29 June 2011 Last updated at 09:03 GMT By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News The DMC-3 satellites will see details less than a metre across Chinese and UK companies have agreed a deal that will result in three high-resolution Earth observation spacecraft being built to map China's extraordinary growth from orbit.

The deal was penned between Guildford satellite imagery provider DMCii and Beijing-based company 21AT.

It means DMCii can now roll out its new constellation of spacecraft that will picture details on the surface of the planet less than a metre wide.

They should be ready to launch in 2014.

For 21AT (Twenty First Century Aerospace Technology Company Ltd), it means it can have ready access to Earth imagery without the worry of having to launch and operate satellites in orbit.

The Chinese company will take 100% of the capacity of the three spacecraft over an initial contract period of seven years. Day-to-day use of the data will be handled by 21AT subsidiary, BLMIT.

It will use the pictures to monitor land use and land-cover changes. In particular, the data will enable regional governments to plan better the extraordinary rate of development in China's cities.

The satellites for the DMC-3 constellation, as it is called, will be manufactured by DMCii's parent company, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL). It will cost some ?110m to build, launch and insure these platforms.

The imagery from the satellites will be needed in particular for urban planning

Approval for the deal has come from the highest levels in government in both London and Beijing, and the satellite data package was actually part of the ?1.4bn of trade agreements signed between premiers David Cameron and Wen Jiabao during their summit on Monday.

Both administrations gave their consent after being re-assured that no technology transfer rules were being broken.

The DMC-3 constellation will be operated on a different business model to the other satellites managed currently by DMCii.

These older platforms are wholly owned by the countries that use their data. In the case of DMC-3, the Guildford company will own the spacecraft and lease the capacity to the Chinese. It is a model familiar in satellite telecommunications but not in Earth observation.

Each DMC-3 satellite will be in a larger class than the earlier spacecraft - about 350kg in mass.

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

This broad-swath facility will allow DMCii to use the new satellites for disaster response - a key skill the company has developed for itself during its seven years of existence.

Its current fleet plays a leading role in acquiring the urgent maps needed by relief agencies when a natural or man-made calamity strikes a particular corner of the globe.

The deal was signed on Monday - part of a much wider UK-China trade agreement

No formal arrangement has been put in place to allow the Chinese-sponsored platforms to perform this function, but it is expected they will take up some humanitarian duties from time to time.

21AT-BLMIT already does this with the Beijing-1 satellite that has been managed in orbit by DMCii since its launch in 2005. Beijing-1 returned much needed imagery following the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008.

The vast majority of the time, however, the DMC-3 satellites will be busy mapping the rapidly changing landscape of China. Their coverage should ensure that any given area in the country can be re-visited on a daily basis.

DMCii hopes the initial three satellites can be followed by a fourth in due course.

"There is an enormous requirement for Earth observation data in China - for urban planning, for agriculture and water management, everything - and they also want to be able to update everything rapidly," explained SSTL Chairman, Sir Martin Sweeting.

"On that basis we planned to put up a constellation of three spacecraft, but when the Chinese went away and looked in detail at what they needed they realised they wanted all the data. So, we'll launch these first three satellites and then look at putting up a fourth to expand the capacity and bring other partners on board as well," he told BBC News.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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Precious catch

29 June 2011 Last updated at 07:18 GMT Fishermen are hoping that bountiful catches will resume Communities in southern Bolivia's Tarija region rely heavily on fishing the Pilcomayo River. But as the BBC's Mattia Cabitza reports, irregular rains have led to a rapid build-up of sediment that has disrupted fish life cycles, putting livelihoods at risk.

It is the height of the fishing season in southern Bolivia, and dozens of men, women and children gather with much anticipation on the muddy banks of the Pilcomayo River.

With the help of a wooden boat and a couple of men up to their waists in water, people from Capirendita, a Weehnayek indigenous community, lay a long net across the whole width of the river.

In a matter of minutes, they start pulling on a rope and the net begins to emerge from the brown waters.

The eyes of the whole community scan over the net, laid flat on the river bank, in search of a bountiful catch in the mesh. But very few fish are flapping on the sandy bank.

A prized catch: Fisherman shows off a sabalo (Prochilodus lineatus)

"It's only five," says a man, after he has put them all inside a large fibre bag that is a stark reminder of how much they used to net.

"Last year, we were catching 10,000 a day," says Jose Segundo, a leader of the community of 220 families.

"But now, not even 1,000. They're not even enough to feed us."

His wife, Roxana Cabrera, looks out of their makeshift tent, her three young children beside her. She is also worried they can no longer make a living from fishing.

"Every time we lay the nets, it's just 10 or 15 fishes at most," she says.

"We now make no more than 10 bolivianos ($1.44, 80p). We used to make 300 bolivianos."

Changing rainfall

The Bolivian government has declared the Pilcomayo region a national disaster zone.

"We are living through a very critical time," says Alejandro Romero, of the National Technical Office of the Pilcomayo and Bermejo Rivers.

"We're seeing environmental degradation of considerable magnitude in the whole Pilcomayo basin."

Mr Romero explains that the river naturally carries up to 170m tonnes of sediment each year, which is deposited in the lower basin in neighbouring Paraguay and Argentina, where the Pilcomayo flows.

But in the last two years, a disrupted rainfall pattern in Bolivia, where the river rises, has accelerated the process of sedimentation, he says.

More intensive downpours mean that the river carries more water downstream at a higher velocity, causing faster erosion along its course.

The community is working together to try to cope with falling stocks

This phenomenon, Mr Romero explains, creates larger than usual sand banks in the plains of Paraguay and Argentina.

The sediments there block the flow of the Pilcomayo after the rainy season, when it is natural for its volume of water to substantially decrease.

"There's a tract of the river that has seen a gradual build-up of sediments, and it is now blocked," says Mr Romero.

The tract he refers to is at the entrance of the Banado La Estrella, a huge swamp in the Formosa province of Argentina where the sabalo, the fish of the Pilcomayo, feeds and fattens.

Seeking solutions

Like salmon in North America and Europe, the sabalo, on which 6,000 families in Bolivia alone depend, swims upstream to spawn.

But because of the build-up of mud, it cannot complete its life cycle and reach its natural reproductive grounds in southern Bolivia.

Catches of sabalo have declined dramatically

"The situation of the indigenous people is very worrying," says Moises Sapiranda, the leader of Orcaweta, an organisation which groups together the 42 Weehnayek and Tapiete indigenous communities in Bolivia.

"We've depended on fishing for more than 500 years. It's the only food we've got during the fishing season," he says, referring to the period from 15 April to 15 September.

"If people don't fish, they go hungry and they migrate to other areas in search of work."

Because of the changing weather patterns, the Bolivian government fears the problem is likely to recur every year, and affect on a regular basis the 1.5 million people who live in the whole Pilcomayo basin.

"First of all, we need to do engineering work to guarantee a permanent constant flow of water," says Nelson Aguilar Rodriguez of the National Technical Office of the Pilcomayo and Bermejo Rivers.

"The other option is to build artificial lagoons in Bolivian territory so that we can have fish here," he says.

Such move would be unpopular with Bolivia's neighbours, because it would mean diverting water away from their agriculture and industry.

Jose Segundo and his family depend on the fish they catch

Bolivia recognises this would be a last resort. It wants Argentina to dredge the sediments on its tract of the river, so that the fish can swim upstream once again.

Argentina says it has begun doing this work, and that it will take weeks to finish.

But despite the assurances that Bolivia and its neighbours are doing all they can, people who depend on the river are far from satisfied.

"For us, the Pilcomayo is like a mother that gives us life," says Moises Sapiranda, the Orcaweta leader.

"Our people are now united and we will continue to pressure the authorities."

Mr Sapiranda says they will set up road blocks, and are ready to protest and keep on protesting until the problem is solved.

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Tennis' real hawk eye

28 June 2011 Last updated at 23:04 GMT By Simon Jack Business correspondent, BBC News Rufus frightens away any pests that might venture near to Wimbledon's courts

There are many businesses that thrive during the fortnight of the Wimbledon tennis championships.

However, few of the many catering or hospitality firm employees working at the south London venue for two weeks are prepared to work for scraps of dead mice or quail.

As the All England Club staff prepare the world-famous grounds for each day's new play, look skyward and you will see another member of the team hard at work.

Rufus is an American Harris Hawk who even has his own pass allowing him access to the All England Club.

His job is to clear Centre Court and the surrounding area of the pigeons, tempted by discarded food, who might become a nuisance during the tournament.

Rufus is a high-flying employee of Avian Control System, a Northamptonshire based company founded by Wayne Davis.

Mr Davis, 46, got his first bird of prey, a kestrel, when he was an eight-year-old boy living on a housing estate in Corby.

Wife alert

But it wasn't till the owners of a nearby flour mill one day noticed the effect his birds had on the local pigeon population that he realised there might be a business application for his schoolboy passion.

His firm has now been in business for 13 years, keeping pigeons off factories, landfill sites, hospitals, and other places of work that might be plagued by birds.

And that commercial road led all the way to the All England Club in the south-west of the capital.

For years, stray pigeons fluttered on to Wimbledon's prestige court at major moments, distracting players and disrupting the tournament.

As anyone who lives in, or visits, London will tell you, pigeons in the capital are not easily shooed away and proved unimpressed by officials waving their arms at them.

But their attempts did catch the attention of Wayne's wife, Donna.

"She was watching the tournament on television and saw games being disrupted by pigeons," recalls Mr Davis.

"So she got in touch with the Wimbledon organisers and they liked her idea of bringing in one of my birds to keep pigeons away."

A phone call from the All England Club to Mr Davis followed, asking him to come down for an interview which led to his unusual job.

He has been going back for the best part of a decade now.

Frightening presence

Falconry is a centuries-old pursuit, but this medieval technology has proved superior to modern alternatives.

Mr Davis uses his birds to keep vermin away from Wimbledon courts

And even though this year's pigeons are unlikely to have ever seen an American Harris Hawk before, their instinctive fear of the hawk's shape succeeds in scaring them off where other techniques have failed.

As Mr Davis explains, for the company, it's not just a fortnight's work.

"My bird is flown around the Wimbledon complex early in the morning on three days a week during the tournament," he says.

"It has to be done when there are not many people about, and the hawk has to be 'off-court' before midday when play starts on the outer courts," says Mr Davis.

"He does not kill pigeons, but his presence is enough to frighten them away. It is a deterrent, and an environmentally friendly and unobtrusive way to keep the courts clear.

"I actually visit the site once a week right round the year, as the pigeons do not register the hawk's presence in their memories for very long and it needs a regular presence to keep them away."

Aircraft engines

Birds can present other problems which have expanded the workload for Rufus and his colleagues.

Droppings can create a hygiene and safety issue as they can make work surfaces slippery, while the ammonia present can be corrosive.

Rufus the hawk strikes fear into any pigeons that venture too near to the Wimbledon courts

In flocks, they can be a hazard for aircraft engines and impair pilot visibility.

With such diversity of potential clients, the future of this company looks secure - and as for the employees, future recruitment is in good hands, or talons.

In his office, a young barn owl dubbed Floccus (the meteorological term for a fluffy white cloud) hops around from drawer to computer keyboard, his white down giving way to feathers.

He is getting used to the company of human beings before becoming part of the workforce.

His job might not be pigeon-scaring duties at Wimbledon, but as part of the team as they go round the country to schools and fairs, showing that the ancient British tradition of falconry is flying high and working hard.

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Near miss for space station crew

28 June 2011 Last updated at 20:24 GMT By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News A fragile beauty - the International Space Station could be endangered by even a small piece of passing junk A piece of debris has narrowly missed the International Space Station (ISS), forcing its six crew members to go to their escape capsules and prepare for an emergency evacuation back to Earth.

Officials said the debris came within 335m (1,100ft) of the platform.

The crew were given the all clear to return to work minutes after the object passed by at 1208 GMT.

The junk was of unknown size but experts say even a small object could do considerable damage to the ISS.

The US space agency's (Nasa) Associate Administrator for Space Operations, Bill Gerstenmaier, said it was the closest a debris object had ever come to the station. An analysis was now under way to try to understand its origin, he added.

"We don't know what it was. It doesn't have an ID; it's just listed in our tables as 'unknown'," he told reporters.

The Russian space agency had earlier explained: "A situation arose linked to unidentified 'space trash' passing very close to the space station. The crew was told to take their places aboard the Soyuz spacecraft."

Soyuz capsules are used to ferry crew to and from the orbiting platform, and enough vehicles are always present so that they can be used as "lifeboats" if an emergency arises.

Before getting into the capsules, the crew closed all the hatches on the ISS.

The station is currently manned by three Russians, two Americans and a Japanese astronaut.

Dangerous fragments

A Russian official said that only 10% of all objects in Earth's orbit are satellites, while the rest is rubbish: spent rocket stages, defunct satellites, acceleration blocks and other debris.

Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of thousands of junk fragments in space of up to 10cm (four inches) in size, but there are many millions more pieces that are smaller.

Even fragments a few centimetres in width are a hazard because they travel at many thousands of kilometres per hour.

Normally, the station can use thrusters to move out of the way of a piece of junk, but this alert was raised too late for such a manoeuvre.

"We're working with our Russians partners to see if we can shorten the timeline to do manoeuvres," Mr Gerstenmaier said.

"Today, it takes us a couple of days to actually get the manoeuvre timeline loaded in station and to try to do the manoeuvre to avoid debris. We're working with Russians to make some software changes where we can do that in a much more expedient manner, so if we get late notification of another object - we'll have the ability to move."

Three crew members were forced briefly to follow the same proceedure in an incident in 2009.

The ISS is currently flying at over 380km altitude. It was pushed to this height recently to take it clear of residual air molecules at the top of the atmosphere that tend to drag it downwards over time. Station managers would not wish to push it much higher because that would take it closer to known debris fields and more of the space radiation that can be harmful to the health of astronauts.

The station is a $100bn project that has been under construction about 220m (350km) above the Earth since 1998. Five partners are involved - the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe (10 nations coordinated through the European Space Agency).

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Beautiful data

29 June 2011 Last updated at 07:51 GMT By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News Ellie Gibson learns how the voyages of trains, planes, tubes, bikes and buses come to life graphically through "data visualisation".

"Information wants to be free" has been one of the rallying cries of geeks, digital activists and hackers since the earliest days of the net.

That's free in the sense of not costing a penny and in the sense that it is always looking for ways to escape. It wants to get out from the databases and drives where it is stored and mingle with the web users of the world.

For a long time the information being freed online has been the expertise of web users. Many, many communities have sprung up around the places where information on all manner of subjects is shared.

Datastream cowboys

Increasingly, the information finding its way on to the web is the raw stuff, the numbers, the data.

Some of that data comes from day-to-day use of the web but many organisations - local and national governments, corporations and web firms - are making huge stores of it available to anyone and everyone to play with.

Even better, the data visualisation tools that can manipulate and present that information are getting easier to use and available to anyone.

When it comes to data, visualisation means turning those raw numbers into graphs, diagrams and animations.

Visualisation helps understand the ebb and flow of bike hire in London

"There's a strength to visualisation because if you showed the data as a series of numbers it wouldn't mean much," said Dr Martin Austwick, a research fellow at UCL's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis who uses data visualisation techniques in his work.

In one project, Dr Austwick has been visualising data generated by users of Boris bikes in London to map the ebb and flow of the hireable bicycles around the capital. It is, he said, a great example of the complex data sets that people are starting to visualise.

The data involves about 400 bike stands that log when a bike is picked up or dropped off from them. They know which bike has gone where so estimates can be made of the route a user takes between two stands.

Understanding the dynamics of this any other way than visually would be impossible, said Dr Austwick.

Animating it, using circles glowing blue and red to represent activity at bike stands, makes it almost symphonic. It lays bare one of the dynamics of London life.

"We're trying to find patterns in the disorder and map the underlying ebbs and flows of the city," he said.

School career

A recent convert to data visualisation is Andy Kirk who has spent much of his working life in operational research roles. That job typically involves gathering data about a process or procedure within a business then carrying out exhaustive analysis to find better ways to do it.

Continue reading the main story

If you make these tools and data available to a broader range of people you are just going to get better idea”

End Quote Dr Martin Austwick When he took up a job in academia, Mr Kirk started questioning how he presented the data he was analysing and started looking for tools to help do a better job.

He was lucky because at about the same time that the software tools to do data visualisation, many of them open source and freely available, were starting to appear.

For him those visualisation tools often provide a quick route to understanding what data has captured. The best visualisations were a mix of art and science, said Mr Kirk, and use the aesthetics to lay bare what would otherwise stay concealed.

"It brings patterns to light that would not otherwise see," he said. "It's about making data accessible but that does not necessarily mean simplistic."

The trends in data can become very apparent when animated

Data visualisation can mean that the facts buried in a data set become unearthed, no matter how unpalatable they are.

"You can obscure truth with statistics," said Mr Kirk, "but the beauty of visualisation when done correctly is that it brings out the true pattern that can be uncomfortable to interpret."

On that theme, Mr Kirk is helping to judge a competition that aims to find the best way to visualise data about the ethnic breakdown of students at Britain's universities.

The competition came about via a Tweet from data visualisation guru David McCandless who did not have time to do the job himself.

And it is in the social and political aspects of data visualisation that its real value emerges.

"If you make these tools and data available to a broader range of people you are just going to get better ideas," said Dr Austwick.

Given that a lot of the data becoming available is from official sources, those better ideas could have a lasting impact.

"Long term, if you can analyse these systems and understand them a lot better we can have policy improvements that make them work better," he said. "These are things that affect a lot of people, it's about quality of life."

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Tepco asked to abandon nuclear

28 June 2011 Last updated at 10:32 GMT There has been growing anger over the way Tepco has handled the Fukushima Daiichi radiation crisis Japan's Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) faced the wrath of shareholders at its first annual meeting since the 11 March earthquake and tsunami.

One motion called for the company to abandon nuclear energy in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis, although this was defeated.

Tepco may have to pay compensation of almost $100bn (?63bn) following radiation leaks at its nuclear plant.

Tepco shares have plunged 85% since the tsunami damaged the Fukushima plant.

The disaster caused a meltdown at three of the six reactors, and more than three months on radioactive material continues to leak from the facility.

Shareholders have criticised Tepco's management for their slow response to the crisis, accusing them of putting out inaccurate data and displaying a lack of transparency.

Some 80,000 residents living close to the plant have been forced to abandon their properties.

Executives at the meeting in Tokyo issued an apology amid angry shouts and heckling by shareholders.

One shareholder said the senior executives should commit suicide by jumping into the damaged reactors.

"All of us directors apologise deeply for the troubles and fears that the accident has caused. We're working to resolve this crisis as quickly as possible," said Tepco chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata.

Tepco has said it hoped to achieve a cold shutdown of the plant by January next year.

Earthquake risk

The biggest debate among shareholders revolved around the future of nuclear energy and what the company's stand on the issue should be.

Opponents failed to win enough support for a motion that would have forced Tepco to scrap all reactors and halt any construction of new ones.

They said nuclear power did not have a feasible future, not least because of the ongoing Fukushima nuclear crisis.

"Japan has a lot of earthquakes and after this accident I just don't think there is such a thing as safe nuclear power here," said one shareholder, Takako Kameoka.

Japan relies on nuclear power for 30% of its electricity needs.

Although thousands of those present at the six-hour meeting supported the motion, the institutional shareholders that own most of the stock were not swayed, and the motion was defeated.

Analysts said that the current power shortage in Japan was proof that the country needed nuclear power in order to meet its energy demands.

"The question is, can Japan do without nuclear power?" said Mitsushige Akino, of Ichiyoshi Investment Management Company.

"How much are the Japanese people willing to sacrifice in terms of standard of living? The sentiment is understandable, but the reality is that this is difficult without considerable sacrifice to economic growth and activity."

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Japan tackles radioactive water

27 June 2011 Last updated at 12:05 GMT Some of the radioactive water is being temporarily stored in special tanks away from the site Operators of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have begun pumping decontaminated water in as part of a system to cool damaged reactors.

The government hailed the move as "a giant step forward" in bringing the facility under control.

Some 110,000 tonnes of water have built up during efforts to cool reactors hit by the 11 March earthquake and tsunami.

The tsunami destroyed both power and back-up generators at the plant, breaking the cooling systems.

Three of the reactors went into meltdown, and there have been radiation leaks.

It is the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986.

'Critical'

Operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said about 1,850 tonnes of radioactive water had been recycled so far.

The firm said it would continue to inject 16 tonnes of water every hour into reactors 1, 2, and 3, and that 13 tonnes of this would be the decontaminated water.

"This is critical in two aspects," said Goshi Hosono, an adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

"First, the system will solve the problem of contaminated water, which gave all sorts of worries to the world. Second, it will enable stable cooling of reactors."

Tepco has been running out of space to store the huge quantities of contaminated water, which has also hindered engineers' efforts to carry out critical work.

Small amounts of low-radioactive wastewater have been released into the sea.

Tepco said the process would help the company meet its target of bringing the plant to a "cold shutdown" by January next year.

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Light pulse flips gene switch

24 June 2011 Last updated at 14:42 GMT By Jennifer Carpenter Science reporter, BBC News LEDs deliver a long pulse of blue-light to mammalian cells to turn on these little protein factories. Scientists have developed a technique that could be used to deliver precise doses of hormones to people who don't make them naturally.

To do this, they rewired kidney cells with light-sensitive molecules from the eye, they reported in the journal Science.

When pulsed with blue light, these cells churned out proteins on demand.

Ultimately, this technique could avoid the need for people with diabetes to inject themselves regularly.

"When I speak to diabetes patients they say that if you could take away always having to inject themselves it would really increase their quality of life," said lead author Martin Fussenegger, a bioengineer of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich.

Dr Fussenegger thought he saw a solution in his own field of optogenetics. Optogenetics, as the name suggests, uses light to control the behaviour cells.

To get a cell to respond to light you first have to rejigger it so it has a light-sensitive molecule on its surface. Dr Fussenegger coaxed kidney cells to express melanopsin, a molecule usually found in animals' eyes.

Blue genes

He then placed these cells into diabetic mice. Along with the cells he placed an optic fibre, down which he could pulse blue light to expose the cells at his command.

In the dark, these cells behaved as usual; In the light, however, genes in the cell were switched on and the cell pumped out a protein required for the breakdown of sugars in the blood, helping the mice to control their glucose levels.

He hopes that cells like these could ultimately be implanted into people, and exposed to light - either through the skin or down a optic fibre - to release proteins that would help treat diabetes.

The new technique is a proof of principle. He told BBC News that it was not limited to treating diabetes; this technology could be usedto switch on genes to produce many different proteins in people who do not make them naturally, or are not making enough of them to be healthy.

Light switch

"I think this is a phenomenal research tool," said James Collins, a synthetic biologist at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Maryland, US, who was not involved in the work.

Dr Collins explained that as we move into an age of regenerative medicine, and begin to think of how we use stem cells to produce different tissues in the body, one of the challenges will be to work out which genes are needed to produce certain tissues and cells.

This new technique allows researchers to switch genes on and off to determine which are essential to make a specific tissues.

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Flap-run reveals flight evolution

27 June 2011 Last updated at 02:04 By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC Nature Slow motion video of pigeon running up ramp. Courtesy University of Montana Flight Lab.

The ungainly sight of a bird furiously flapping its wings as its spindly legs propel it forward could be a peek at evolutionary history.

"Flap-running", researchers say, may have been a key step in the evolution of flight.

Experiments with pigeons have shown that it helps birds ascend slopes and suggests the earliest flightless birds might have used the same technique.

The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Brandon Jackson, from the University of Montana, US, who led the study, explained that he and his colleagues wanted to know why birds would flap-run when they were capable of flight.

His co-researcher, Ken Dial, noticed this behaviour when filming a type of partridge known as a chuckar.

As the rotund birds negotiated obstacles, they would run up the objects flapping their wings. When Dr Dial discussed this behaviour with local ranchers and hunters, some reported that adult chukars would flap to run up cliffs, rather than fly.

The birds used far less energy when flap-running than when flying

Dr Jackson and his team decided to find out if the birds might be using the technique to save energy by measuring the amount of power generated by the flight muscles when birds flew and when they were flap-running.

They surgically implanted electrodes into the flight muscles of pigeons - closely related birds that often flap and run even though they are very good fliers.

The electrodes measured muscle activity in the birds as they flapped and ran up ramps of varying inclines, and as they flew parallel to those same ramps.

The team was most surprised by what they saw when they compared the birds' muscle activity on a ramp with a 65 degree incline.

Running up that ramp, explained Dr Jackson, "required about 10% as much power from the flight muscles" as flying.

"The signal was imperceptible at first, and we actually thought we had a problem with the recording equipment. But when we zoomed in, there it was, about a tenth the magnitude that it was during flight," he said.

"The birds seemed to be using hardly any power to flap their wings as they ran up the slopes."

The method, the researchers say, is also an essential learning step for fledging chicks.

"Flap running... lets young birds that cannot yet fly - because of small muscles, small wings, weak feathers, etc - get off the ground and away from some predators," Dr Jackson told BBC Nature.

"And if baby birds can perform these behaviours, benefit from them, and transition gradually to flight in their life-time, we think it's probable that dinosaurs with (similarly small wings) could have performed these behaviours, benefited from them, and transitioned towards flight over evolutionary time."

So watching birds learn to fly could allow us a glimpse of the stages of flight's evolution.

Dr Jackson concluded: "Very small wings powered by small muscles had aerodynamic function and survival benefits when they were flapped.

"No more major steps were required after that, just gradual but beneficial steps. And we can actually observe [those steps] in developing birds today."

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Bangladesh turtle racket exposed

27 June 2011 Last updated at 13:15 GMT By Anbarasan Ethirajan BBC News, Dhaka The size of the seizure has taken experts by surprise Officials in Bangladesh say they have seized more than 120kg (18st 5lb) of dried turtles from smugglers near the north-western border with India.

But the smugglers managed to escape after Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) troops gave chase in Dinajpur district.

"The dried turtles were being smuggled from India. This is the largest haul in the border region so far," BGB Lt Col Amirul Islam told the BBC.

Dried turtles can be used in soups and also in oriental medicine.

One kilogram of dried turtle costs around $140 (?88) on the international market.

Officials say there has been an increase in the smuggling of live animals and dried turtle through Bangladesh in recent months.

"I am quite surprised by the size of the seizure," said Richard Thomas, spokesman for the Traffic wildlife trade monitoring network.

"It raises the question, how many bags are getting through undetected?"

Mr Thomas said that if existing patterns served as a guideline, the dried turtles may have originated from north-eastern India to be sold in East Asia for medicinal uses.

Dried turtles are used in soups and in oriental medicine

According to Traffic, Asia's tortoises and freshwater turtles are being harvested in huge quantities to meet the demand for meat and traditional medicines, mostly in East Asia. The species are also in demand as pets.

Earlier this month, customs officials at Bangkok found hundreds of turtles, tortoises and gharial crocodiles packed in suitcases that came on a flight from Bangladesh.

In recent months, Bangladeshi officials also seized a number of protected wild animals within the country from individuals who were keeping them illegally.

"Bangladesh is becoming a transit point for illegal trafficking of wild animals from the region," Tapan Kumar Dey, conservator of forests with the Bangladesh Forestry Department, told the BBC.

"Traffickers are using our country's porous land borders with India to smuggle wild animals into Bangladesh and then transport them to South-East Asian countries," Mr Dey said.

Environmentalists say if the trafficking is not stopped then it could pose a threat to conservation efforts both in India and Bangladesh.

"The latest seizures illustrate that illegal trade is systematically wiping out Asia's freshwater turtles and tortoises," Mr Thomas said.

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France to boost nuclear funding

27 June 2011 Last updated at 12:05 GMT Anti-nuclear groups have urged France to close Fessenheim - its oldest atomic plant France will invest 1bn euros (?0.8bn) in nuclear power despite warnings after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, President Nicolas Sarkozy says.

The new investment will include a boost for research into nuclear safety.

The French nuclear giant Areva is developing the fourth generation of reactors. France gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear power.

Earlier this year neighbouring Germany, Switzerland and Italy voted against nuclear power, following Fukushima.

The BBC's Christian Fraser in Paris says that as president of the G8 and G20 industrial groups, Mr Sarkozy has been pushing for an international standard on nuclear safety.

"We are going to devote a billion euros to the nuclear programme of the future, particularly fourth-generation technology," Mr Sarkozy told a news conference.

"We are also going to release substantial resources from the big loan to strengthen research in the sphere of nuclear safety."

He stressed his government was still investing "massively" in renewable energy. He announced 1.35bn euros of investment for that sector.

But our correspondent says it is obvious how important nuclear power is to the French economy and its energy security.

The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant's cooling systems were knocked out by the 11 March earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The disaster caused a meltdown at three of the reactors and the plant is still leaking radiation.

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'Super sand' to help clean water

24 June 2011 Last updated at 11:34 GMT The technology could help improve access to clean water in developing countries Contaminated water can be cleaned much more effectively using a novel, cheap material, say researchers.

Dubbed "super sand", it could become a low-cost way to purify water in the developing world.

The technology involves coating grains of sand in an oxide of a widely available material called graphite - commonly used as lead in pencils.

The team describes the work in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials and Interfaces.

In many countries around the world, access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities is still limited.

The World Health Organization states that "just 60% of the population in Sub-Saharan African and 50% of the population in Oceania [islands in the tropical Pacific Ocean] use improved sources of drinking-water."

The graphite-coated sand grains might be a solution - especially as people have already used sand to purify water since ancient times.

Coating the sand

But with ordinary sand, filtering techniques can be tricky.

Continue reading the main story

Given that this can be synthesized using room temperature processes and also from cheap graphite sources, it is likely to be cost-efficient”

End Quote Mainak Majumder Monash University, Australia Wei Gao from Rice university in Texas, US, told BBC News that regular coarse sand was a lot less effective than fine sand when water was contaminated with pathogens, organic contaminants and heavy metal ions.

While fine sand is slightly better, water drains through it very slowly.

"Our product combines coarse sand with functional carbon material that could offer higher retention for those pollutants, and at the same time gives good throughput," explained the researcher.

She said that the technique the team has developed to make the sand involves dispersing graphite oxide into water and mixing it with regular sand.

"We then heat the whole mixture up to 105C for a couple of hours to evaporate the water, and use the final product - 'coated sand' - to purify polluted water."

Cost-efficient "Super sand" is made using regular sand - and it could become a low-cost way to purify water

The lead scientist of the study, Professor Pulickel Ajayan, said it was possible to modify the graphite oxide in order to make it more selective and sensitive to certain pollutants - such as organic contaminants or specific metals in dirty water.

Another team member, Dr Mainak Majumder from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said it had another advantage - it was cheap.

"This material demonstrates comparable performance to some commercially available activated carbon materials," he said.

"But given that this can be synthesized using room temperature processes and also from cheap graphite sources, it is likely to be cost-efficient."

He pointed out that in Australia many mining companies extract graphite and they produce a lot of graphite-rich waste.

"This waste can be harnessed for water purification," he said.

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Opponents of pi mark special day

28 June 2011 Last updated at 08:46 GMT By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News Fans of tau suggest it makes more sense than pi when describing fractions of a circle The mathematical constant pi is under threat from a group of detractors who will be marking "Tau Day" on Tuesday.

Tau Day revellers suggest a constant called tau should take its place: twice as large as pi, or about 6.28 - hence the 28 June celebration.

Tau proponents say that for many problems in maths, tau makes more sense and makes calculations easier.

Not all fans of maths agree, however, and pi's rich history means it will be a difficult number to unseat.

"I like to describe myself as the world's leading anti-pi propagandist," said Michael Hartl, an educator and former theoretical physicist.

"When I say pi is wrong, it doesn't have any flaws in its definition - it is what you think it is, a ratio of circumference to diameter. But circles are not about diameters, they're about radii; circles are the set of all the points a given distance - a radius - from the centre," Dr Hartl explained to BBC News.

By defining pi in terms of diameter, he said, "what you're really doing is defining it as the ratio of the circumference to twice the radius, and that factor of two haunts you throughout mathematics."

The discrepancy is most noticeable when circles are defined not as a number of degrees, but as what are known as radians - of which there are two times pi in a full circle. With tau, half a circle is one-half tau.

Dr Hartl reckons people still use degrees as a measure of angle because pi's involvement in radians makes them too unwieldy.

He credits Bob Palais of the University of Utah with first pointing out that "pi is wrong", in a 2001 article in the Mathematical Intelligencer.

But it is Dr Hartl who is responsible for the Tau Manifesto - calling tau the more convenient formulation and instituting Tau Day to celebrate it.

Kevin Houston, a mathematician from the University of Leeds, counts himself as a convert.

"It was one of the weirdest things I'd come across, but it makes sense," he told BBC News.

"It's surprising people haven't changed before. Almost anything you can do in maths with pi you can do with tau anyway, but when it comes to using pi versus tau, tau wins - it's much more natural."

Dr Hartl is passionate about the effort, but even he is surprised by the fervent nature of some tau adherents.

"What's amazing is the 'conversion experience': people find themselves almost violently angry at pi. They feel like they've been lied to their whole lives, so it's amazing how many people express their displeasure with pi in the strongest possible terms - often involving profanity.

"I don't condone any actual violence - that would be really bizarre, wouldn't it?"

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Material difference

28 June 2011 Last updated at 08:04 GMT By Katia Moskvitch Technology reporter, BBC News Graphene transistor (pictured) has now been integrated onto a single platform Graphene is a "wonder material" waiting to happen.

Since this super-conductive form of carbon, made from single-atom-thick sheets, was first produced in 2004, it has promised to revolutionise electronics.

But until recently, it existed more in the realm of science than technology, with limited production techniques and only theoretical applications.

Now a couple of breakthroughs are promising to take graphene out of the lab and into real devices.

The first relates to how it is made.

Currently graphene is "grown" at sweltering temperatures using chemical vapour deposition.

Graphene is "grown" at sweltering temperatures of 1000C

"In the process, a mixture of gases is passed above the catalyst metal - a piece of copper foil or thin nickel film - heated to about 1000C," said Dr Daniil Stolyarov, chief technology officer at New York-based Graphene Laboratories.

"Methane molecules decompose on the surface of the metal and release carbon atoms, which then assemble into a graphene film."

The system is complex and relatively low yield.

Now researchers at Northern Illinois University (NIU) have found a much easier way to manufacture high volumes of graphene - by burning magnesium in dry ice.

The scientists say that the method is simple, faster and greener.

Reporting their findings in the Journal of Materials Chemistry, the team revealed that it had managed to produce "few layer" graphene, several atoms thick.

The NIU discovery happened as a by-product of research into creating carbon nano-tubes.

"It surprised us all," said Narayan Hosmane, professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

Faster chips

The second major breakthrough exciting materials scientists centres on a possible application for graphene.

Its conductive properties are well known and it has long been the vision of chip designers to construct graphene-based processors.

IBM made early inroads in 2010 when it created a basic graphene transistor.

This month, the company announced that it had gone a step further, integrating it into a circuit known as a broadband frequency mixer - an essential component of TVs, mobile phones and radios.

First-ever integrated circuit with a graphene transistor

"When a radio station broadcasts at a high frequency through space, the wave is then received by your radio, but the high frequency cannot be heard, so it must be converted into a low frequency wave that we can hear," the lead scientist of the project, Dr Phaedon Avouris, told BBC News.

IBM calls its research an important milestone for the future of wireless devices.

Perhaps more importantly, it demonstrates the capability of graphene integrated circuits.

Previously, scientists had experienced difficulty preserving the integrity of the material during the silicon etching process. Getting it to work alongside other chip materials had also proved problematic.

"Our work demonstrates that graphene can be used as practical technology, that it's no longer some individual material," said Dr Yu-Ming Lin, one of the scientists on the project.

"This is the first wafer-scale production of graphene-integrated circuit - and we've shown that graphene can be integrated with other elements to form a complete function, which enables higher performance and more complex functionalities in a circuit."

The results appear impressive.

In their paper published in the journal Science, the team explained that the circuit could operate at high frequencies of up to 10GHz (10 billion cycles per second), and at temperatures of up to 127°C.

Big surprise

IBM's work surprised many - even the physicist behind the material's discovery.

"I never suspected we would get there so fast," said Dr Konstantin Novoselov of Manchester University.

Continue reading the main story

One of our projects is exploring the possibility of using graphene as a membrane in the next generation of artificial kidneys”

End Quote Dr Daniil Stolyarov Graphene Labs He is the man who, together with a colleague Dr Andre Geim, discovered this highly conductive, extremely strong and transparent material in 2004.

The two scientists, both originally from Russia, managed to extract graphene while experimenting with plain old sticky tape and graphite, commonly used in pencils.

The pair won the prestigious Nobel Prize for their breakthrough.

"This integrated circuit is a logical step forward, and it's somewhere in the middle between the first experiments and real-life applications," said Dr Novoselov.

"But I was surprised to see that someone managed to do it that quickly."

Other applications

Electronics giants as well as small labs have been eyeing graphene's future prospects, hungry for smaller, faster, thermally stable and more powerful electronic components.

Yu-Ming Lin (l) and Phaedon Avouris (r) are part of the IBM team working with graphene

Korea's Samsung has invested heavily into graphene research, and the Finnish firm Nokia has just announced its plans to team up with partners - among them the two Nobel-prize winners - to explore graphene opportunities.

Besides electronics, graphene could be used in optics and composite material applications.

A number of graphene-based prototypes have already been developed in labs around the world - and it seems that possibilities are almost endless.

It has also proven a hit with biologists - as the most transparent, strongest and most conductive material on Earth, graphene could be an ideal candidate for Transmission Electron Microscopy.

Samsung has promised to release its first mobile phone with a graphene screen in the near future.

Professor Andrea Ferrari of Cambridge University says that besides being totally flexible, a touch screen of a phone or a tablet made of graphene could even give you "sensational" feedback.

Continue reading the main story

Your phone will be able to sense if you're touching it - you won't have to press a button to turn it on or off”

End Quote Prof Andrea Ferrari Cambridge University "We went from physical buttons to touch screens, the next step will be integrating some sensing capabilities," says Professor Ferrari.

"Your phone will be able to sense if you're touching it, will sense the environment around - you won't have to press a button to turn it on or off, it will recognise if you're using it or not."

Also, he said, one day we might not need to carry around GPS devices - along with other graphene-based sensors, they could be woven into our clothes.

"Besides GPS, you could have something that will monitor your heart rate for instance - and it'll be integrated into the fabric," explains Professor Ferrari.

And graphene could even help airplanes "communicate" with pilots.

The scientist explained that electrical properties of graphene change depending on the strain it is subjected to - like when there are strong winds, for instance.

So the casing of the plane would be able to sense if it is under great or small stress, and feedback the information directly to the cockpit, without the need for additional sensors.

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