NEWS SCAN
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday June 11, 2009
Hands-free remindersYour hands are full with luggage, shopping, a coat or briefcase, and there is something you need to remember, like the level and row details of where you parked your car. Help is at hand. American engineering students have developed an application for mobile phones that lets users write short notes or sketch simple drawings in the air with the phone. The message is then automatically sent to an email address. Eventually, more complex air-writing capabilities are expected to be developed, the team at Duke University, North Carolina, said.Uncovering tame genesBreaking in wild animals is set to become easier, with the identification of genes linked to tameness. The find, published in the journal Genetics, should help our understanding of why some animals interact better with humans than others. "Maybe we'll be able to domesticate a few of those species where humans have historically not been successful, like the wild African buffalo," said Frank Albert, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, who led the study.Choose to be smooth"Eco driving", or driving more smoothly, can dramatically cut carbon emissions in heavy vehicles, a study has found. The Monash University research showed drivers of 68-tonne trucks cut their fuel consumption by 27 per cent simply by anticipating traffic flow, skipping gears when changing up, changing gears at lower engine revolutions and braking less forcefully.Aged lobes lose self-controlHaving a flutter on the pokies might not always be an act of personal choice for some older adults. Professor Bill von Hippel, a psychologist at the University of Queensland, has found gambling problems among older adults, which are on the rise, may be due to decreased self-control because of age-related decline in the brain's frontal lobes. Most older adults show better frontal lobe functioning earlier in the day, so they might gamble more wisely if they avoid afternoon or evening sessions.Jet downed by geeseThe birds that brought down US Airways Flight 1549 in January, resulting in an emergency landing in the Hudson River, were migratory Canada geese, a DNA study has shown. Canada geese are one of the largest species of birds in North America, weighing about 3.6 kilograms each. Those that hit the plane were similar to migratory birds from the Labrador region in Canada data that could help prevent future bird strikes.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald