The latest round of ideas as to how man could survive for long periods on the moon have arrived – this time, a Canadian boffin thinks using the natural caves would be a good answer the the radiation issues. It strikes me as being a rather academic concern, at least until there are some serious and concrete plans for, you know, actually getting there.

Glowing fish in polluted waters may be more than a visual joke from The Simpsons, thanks to a recent patent. The idea is to splice genes from fireflys into zebrafish, with the aim of getting them to glow in response to the presence of various toxins in any water they are exposed to. Not just reusable, but infinitely more calming to watch than other pollution metering systems…

The big question amongst the tinfoil hat brigade at the moment is “what the hell is the MiTEx for?” The MiTEx are a pair of prototype satellites from the DARPA stable, whose purposes are shadowed in mystery, but whose capabilities are a cause for speculation – their ability to maneuver for large distances at the level of geostationary orbit could indicate they might be purposed for examining (and maybe attacking) other satellites.

Here’s a turn-up for the books – it seems we Brits won’t have to go to overpriced specialist outlets for our reneable energy needs any more, now that Curry’s (a well known domestic electrical retailer) is stocking roof-mounting solar panels alongside the products whose power-hunger makes solar energy a necessity. If only I owned my own home!

Even though we use them all the time, we rarely appreciate how subtle a piece of evolutionary engineering our hands really are, and replicating their function mechanically is a task that has defied roboticists for many years. However, Shadow Robotics claim to have done exactly that, creating a robot mitt with ‘comparable force output’ to the human version, and incorporating the full 24 degrees of freedom as well. The pictures show it holding eggs and plastic bottles – if they’re not just good PR shots, Shadow must have cracked the ‘force-feedback’ problem, and the videos seem to confirm it.