The Rosser’s sac spider, which had not been seen for 10 years, has been discovered at Chippenham Fen in Cambridgeshire.

It makes its home in wetland areas and had been found only once before, at Lakenheath Fen in Suffolk.

Fears were growing that the spider had died out due to loss of habitat.

The light brown spider was first discovered in the 1950s, but the draining of the fens and changing farming practices since the World War II had put it under threat.

Spider enthusiast Ian Dawson spotted a Rosser’s sac spider in September at the Cambridgeshire site, and a further search in October revealed 10 spiders.

He said: “I was extremely surprised to find the first one and then when we went back a month later it was great to find more of them.

“If we’ve managed to find 10 of them, I think there must be quite a sizeable population of Rosser’s at that particular site.”

The first photographs of live Rosser’s sac spiders were taken by Peter Harvey, who took part in the second survey.

‘Still creeping around’
 
Matt Shardlow, chief executive of insect conservation charity Buglife said: “This spider is globally endangered.

“It’s fantastic that it’s still creeping around in the British countryside and we’re ecstatic that people can now see what it looks like for the first time in history.

“If we want future generations to be able to see the live animal, we will need to take great care of the tiny remaining fragments of wild wetlands in this country and reinstate large areas of lost fen.”

Mike Taylor, of Natural England, which manages the Chippenham Fen reserve, said: “Rosser’s sac spiders spend their days hidden in tubular silken retreats, often in a folded leaf, a bit like a sleeping bag.

“It’s a member of the clubionid family of spiders who like to hunt their prey rather than catch them in a web.

“We were delighted that they have been spotted recently.”

Source: BBC News

Although 56% of UK households now have an HD television, 91% still watch standard DVDs and get their television through standard set-top boxes.

Full HD broadcasting can be viewed from Sky, Virgin and Freesat but will eventually be available on Freeview.

For full HD, films must be played on an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player.

Games consoles that some consumers have already offer HD content. Sony’s PlayStation 3 already has a Blu-Ray player built in, and the next versions of Microsoft’s XBox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii are rumoured to include Blu-Ray as well.

However, the survey of 2000 adults showed 81% admitted to not getting the best from any of the hi-tech gadgets around their homes – from mobiles to laptops.

That means that many consumers who have all the technology in hand to view full HD may not be setting up the devices and the cables properly to do so.

Cable, television

Sometimes it is as simple as not using the correct cable; all that is needed is an HDMI cable, and cheap ones work as well as expensive ones.

While HD boxes from commercial providers like Sky and Virgin come with an installation cost, the implications are that people are stymied by the technical details rather than the economics.

Unsurprisingly, 27% of respondents admitted to not reading the instruction manuals for their gadgets and 29% gave up at the outset, saying modern technology is too complicated.

“Unless you’re really into your technology, perhaps you don’t realise that just because it says HD on the box, the picture quality isn’t necessarily HD,” said Stuart Miles, editor of technology website Pocket Lint.

“Once you show people HD they realise how poor the standard picture is, but a lot of people don’t get the opportunity to see that.”

Source: BBC News

The approach relies on the use of carbon nanotubes – tiny cylinders of carbon – to collect electric charge.

While small-scale nanotube batteries have been demonstrated before, the plain paper approach lends itself to making larger devices more cheaply.

The work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to “paintable” energy storage.

Because of its structure of millions of tiny, interconnected fibres, paper is a good candidate to hold on to carbon nanotubes, providing a scaffold on which to build devices.

However, paper is also mechanically tough, and can be bent, curled or folded, more than the metal or plastic surfaces that are currently used or under development.

Good on paper

A team of researchers at Stanford University started with off-the-shelf copier paper, painting it with an “ink” made of carbon nanotubes.

The coated paper is then dipped in lithium-containing solutions and an electrolyte to provide the chemical reaction that generates a battery’s electric current.

The paper acts to collect the electric charge from the reaction. Using paper in this way could reduce the weight of batteries, typically made with metal current collectors, by 20%.

The team’s batteries are also capable of releasing their stored energy quickly. That is a valuable characteristic for applications that need quick bursts of energy, such as electric vehicles – although the team has no immediate plans to develop vehicle batteries.

Liangbing Hu, lead author on the research, said the most important aspect of the demonstration was that paper is an inexpensive and well-understood material – making wider usage of the technology more likely.

“Standard copier paper used in our everyday life can be a solution in storing energy in a more efficient and cheap way,” Dr Hu told BBC News.

“The experienced technology developed in the paper industry over a century can be transferred to improve the process and performance of these paper-based devices.”

The team says that adaptations to the technique in the future could allow for simply painting the nanotube ink and active materials onto surfaces such as walls.

They have even experimented with a number of textiles, paving the way for batteries made largely of cloth.

Source: BBC News

Three prototypes of the T.27 model will be developed over the next 16 months.

The manufacturing process, called iStream, has received £9m of investment, half of which came from the government’s Technology Strategy Board.

iStream plants can be just one fifth of the size of a conventional car factory, as the cars are not made from stamped steel.

Final communication with the joint European-US satellite will take place on 30 June.

The long-serving craft, launched in October 1990, has already served four times its expected design life.

The Esa-Nasa mission was the first to survey the environment in space above and below the poles of the Sun.

Data from the craft, published last year, also suggested that the solar wind – the stream of charged particles billowing away from the Sun – is at its weakest for 50 years.

“We expected the spacecraft to cease functioning much earlier,” said Paolo Ferri of the European Space Agency (Esa).

“Although it is always hard to take the decision to terminate a mission, we have to accept that the satellite is running out of resources and a controlled switch-off is the best ending.”

Long life

Ulysses has already defied the odds several times. In its 18-year life, the mission has been extended four times.

But its protracted mission has taken its toll. Ulysses’ main transmitter no longer works and its back-up systems are also beginning to fail.

Last year, the space agencies finally announced that they were finally ready to pull the plug after the satellite’s power supply had weakened to the point where the craft could no longer prevent its hydrazine fuel from freezing.

Engineers believed the craft would become uncontrollable and its end of life was scheduled for 1 July 2008.

However, mission scientists came up with a short-term fix whereby the fuel could be kept circulating by performing a short thruster burn every two hours.

The ingenious fix gave the craft another year of life. But, now, scientists believe it is time to switch off the mission.

In particular, they feel the scientific return has reached a level where it is hard to justify the operational costs.

Final communication with the craft will begin at 1635 GMT and run until 2120 GMT on 30 June, after which no further contact is planned. The craft will in effect become a man-made comet.

“[It] will be a very sad day when we send the last commands to Ulysses,” said Nigel Angold, Esa Mission Operations Manager.

Source: BBC News