A US Navy diver has set a new record for depth while testing the new Atmospheric Diving System (ADS) suit. The suit enabled him to descend over 2000 feet below the surface of the ocean – it is designed to assist in submarine rescue work, to the extent that the its joints actually work more effectively once it gets deeper than 1300 feet.

Space.com is running a great interview with Scaled Composites’ head honcho Burt Rutan. The company are the creators of the prize winning SpaceShipOne, and are pushing hard to make commercial space tourism a reality. He talks about his long term visions and dreams for the company, plans to make SpaceShipTwo an enjoyable experience for customers by providing the room to enjoy zero gravity, and why he went with Richard Branson as an investor.

A team of computer scientists have written an article that calls for the establishing of a new field of study within and beyond their own discipline – they want to see a ‘science of the Web’ that will focus on the potentials and pitfalls of the platform, which has so far been largely been ignored by computer science academics. In the last fifteen years the Web has gone from an engineering curiosity to being a part of daily life for a large part of the world’s population – if that trend is to continue successfully, more research is called for.

In light of the recently foiled terrorist plot here in the UK, and the poorly thought-out implementation of precautions in response (they’re worried about liquids being mixed together as a weapon, but they’re pouring them all into big communal vats in the airports?), it’s both a relief and a frustration to find that there is already technology available that could detect the types of explosives alleged to be at the centre of the plot. A relief, because I don’t want to hear of more innocent people dying for the ideologies of others; a frustration, because the technology costs a fortune, takes a lot of time to use effectively, and throws up a lot of false positives.

The Japanese are making great strides in technologies to assist the disabled, and here is another example. The University of Electro-Communications has announced a prototype of an electric wheelchair whose motion can be controlled by the thought patterns of the user ‘with an 80% degree of accuracy’. If they could apply the same technology to shopping trolleys in supermarkets, the research funding would come flooding in.