Toll-free telephone numbers benefit everyone. It costs callers nothing to use them and organisations paying for the lines attract more callers. Recent trials in Europe suggest this same win-win concept could be successfully used with the mobile Internet.

Surfing the Internet is easy with a third-generation (2.5/3G) mobile phone. But these miracles of wireless technology are nowhere near as popular as expected. Perhaps because their users pay for every byte of data they receive,

Surfing the Web could become a much more effective experience thanks to new approaches endorsed at this year’s ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) Hypertext Conference.

In its current state, the commonly used link in a Web page allows people to search the Web and to use hyperlinks to jump from one page to another. The down side is that when people click links, pages load on top of one another and unless they can recall the route taken, it is easy to lose much of the conten

Researchers at The University of Manchester and Chernogolovka, Russia have discovered the world’s first single-atom-thick fabric, which reveals the existence of a new class of materials and may lead to computers made from a single molecule. The research is to be published in Science on 22 October.

The team led by Professor Andre Geim at The University of Manchester has succeeded in extracting individual planes of carbon atoms from graphite crystals, which has resulted in the prod

UK scientists and industrialists involved in the NASA, ESA, ASI Cassini-Huygens space mission are eagerly awaiting the data to be received when the spacecraft makes its closest fly-by of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, on 26th October.

At the time of the closest approach, which is scheduled to be at 5.44 pm BST (9.44 am PDT), the spacecraft will travel a mere 1200km (745 miles) above the surface of the moon at a speed of 6.1 km per second. Confirmation that the flyby has been suc

Converting quantum bits

A team of physicists at the Georgia Institute of Technology has taken a significant step toward the development of quantum communications systems by successfully transferring quantum information from two different groups of atoms onto a single photon.

The work, to be published in the October 22 issue of the journal Science, represents a “building block” that could lead to development of large-scale quantum networks. Sponsored by the Research Corpor

Physical browsing is a new method for providing direct access to services without the use of complicated menus or inputting long addresses; all the user needs to do is touch an object with a mobile terminal (such as a mobile phone) or point the terminal at the object. A child can call ‘Granny’ by pointing a mobile phone at the grandmother’s photo; a teenager can order a new ringing tone by placing the phone on the tone in a newspaper advertisement; a door can be opened by touching it with a mobil

This turbulent boundary between two latitudinal bands in Saturn’s atmosphere curls repeatedly along its edge in this NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens image.

This pattern is an example of a ’Kelvin-Helmholtz instability’, which occurs when two fluids of different density flow past each other at different speeds. This type of phenomenon should be fairly common on the gas-giant planets given their alternating jets and the different temperatures in their belts and zones.

The i

The passage of ships in and out of ports could be safer if only pilots and masters had online access to vessel traffic service (VTS) information. The IPPA system fulfils this need and received a warm approval from ships’ pilots and harbourmasters alike.

The objective of the IST programme-funded IPPA project was to tap into the VTS information and make it available to pilots and ships’ masters in a user-friendly graphical format.

On trial at three ports

Exactly what governs the motions of falling paper?

While college students suspect the answer is known to lazy professors — the ones who allegedly grade essays by throwing them down stairwells to see which sails the farthest — the so-called falling paper problem has long intrigued scientists.

Now an enterprising professor and her graduate student at Cornell University have solved the falling paper problem — in part by calculating the motions of a scientific journal p

Technologies from space provide new solutions for food handling on Earth. In exchange travellers in space will get gourmet menus from Earth to cheer them up during long space missions. At the International Food Exhibition SIAL in Paris this week, ESA presents an exchange of ideas between food and space, including recipes for travellers to Mars.

“Every year we research and develop a number of pioneering technologies needed for space exploration. Many have potential for innovative s

From 10 to 14 October the ion engine of ESA’s SMART-1 carried out a continuous thrust manoeuvre in a last major push that will get the spacecraft to the Moon capture point on 13 November.

SMART-1, on its way to the Moon, has now covered more than 80 million kilometres. Its journey started on 27 September 2003, when the spacecraft was launched on board an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Since then, it has been spiralling in progressively larger orbit

A major step forward for optical sensing technology

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have reported the first demonstration of integrated optical waveguides with liquid cores, a technology that enables light propagation through small volumes of liquids on a chip. The new technology has a wide range of potential applications, including chemical and biological sensors with single-molecule sensitivity. “It is an enabling technology that opens up a wide range of

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show the eastern rim of the Martian impact crater Huygens.

The images were taken during orbit 532 in June 2004 with a ground resolution of approximately 70 metres per pixel. The displayed region is centred around longitude 61° East and latitude 14° South.

Huygens is an impact structure, about 450 kilometres wide, located in the heavily cratered southern highlands of

Scattered in universities across Europe, a 250-strong team of students have never collectively met in person, but between them they have built a space-ready satellite. SSETI Express is currently being integrated in an ESA cleanroom for a planned launch in May next year.

Collaboration between the pan-European network of students, universities and experts involved in the Student Space Education and Technology Initiative (SSETI) has been carried out via the internet. Now that the co

The number of people who succumb to identity thieves’ “phishing” e-mails could go way up if immediate action isn’t taken to preempt the next generation of attacks, according to Markus Jakobsson, an Indiana University School of Informatics researcher.

A report by cybersecurity expert Jakobsson describing worst-case phishing scenarios was recently cited by Howard Schmidt, chief information security officer for eBay Inc., during his testimony before a U.S. Congressional subcomm

FOKUS’ spinoff iptelorg GmbH attracts international attention. Iptelorg, BridgePort Networks, and Telio provide interoperability for next generation SIP based solutions.

iptelorg, the leading provider of SIP based server solutions for large service providers, announced it has been named to the “Pulver 100” along with its customer BridgePort Networks and partner Telio. The “pulver 100” features private companies in the communications sector that have substantial real-world