"These long-ago brewers were practicing genetics without even knowing it," said Professor Gavin Sherlock of Stanford University School of Medicine.

"They've given us a very interesting opportunity to look at a relatively young, rapidly changing species, as well as some very good beer."

The story of lager begins with medieval Bavarians who forbade the brewing of beer in the summer months due to spoilage.

They chose instead to brew using ale yeast in the winter months -- colder temperatures inhibited the ale yeast and allowed hybridisation with another strain that thrived in the cold.

Analysis of lager yeast DNA reveals that hybridisation occurred not once but twice.

"It's possible that the ale strain provides a certain flavour profile, while the second strain conferred the ability to ferment at cooler temperatures," said Dunn.

"Mixing them together is a nice way for the yeast to double its genetic options."

Looking at the genetic research into lager yeast provides an insight into the history of brewing in Europe over the last 500 years.

One lineage is tied to the Carlsberg breweries in Denmark along with several breweries in the Czech Republic.

The other line is associated with breweries in the Netherlands, including Heineken.

By careful of analysis of how lager yeast's genetic profile has changed over the years, scientists can better determine what genetic traits please drinkers.

"When we look at the genes that have either been lost or amplified in copy number, we can make the case that some of them could be related to brewing," said Professor Sherlock.

"People don't consume as much calcium as nutritionists would like, and one reason for this is that foods high in calcium don't taste good to many people," said Dr Michael G. Tordoff in a presentation to the 236th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.

"Tweaking its taste could encourage a calcium-deficient population to consume more of this key nutrient."

"By understanding how calcium is detected in the mouth, we can either make it easier to consume by reducing its bad taste or even make pharmacological agents that make it taste better."

Researchers at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia discovered that the taste of calcium is detected by two distinct receptors on the mouse's tongue.

One is a calcium-sensing receptor called CaSR, also found in the parathyroid glands, kidney, brain and gastrointestinal tract.

"We didn't know it was on the tongue before," Dr Tordoff said.

The other is a receptor known as T1R3, a component of the 'sweet-taste' receptor -- a finding that researchers described as 'very unexpected.'

Dr Tordoff and his colleagues looked at the calcium preferences of 40 different strains of mice.

"Most mice dislike calcium, but we found a very unusual strain that drinks it avidly," he said.

"By comparing the genes of this strain with other strains, we were able to identify the two calcium taste genes."

Now they must see if humans have a similar capacity.

"It remains to be seen if what we have discovered in mice -- the existence of two calcium taste genes -- holds true for humans," said Dr Tordoff.

"We know people have the sweet-taste gene, Tas1r3, and the gene involved with the calcium-sensing receptor, CaSR."

"We don't know if we have the same forms of genes as the mice have, but it seems pretty likely they have the same function."

But what does calcium actually taste of?

"Calcium tastes calciumy," Dr Tordoff said.

"There isn't a better word for it."

"It is bitter, perhaps even a little sour."

"But it's much more because there are actual receptors for calcium, not just bitter or sour compounds."

The molecule's existence was predicted over 20 years -- now scientists are discovering how it 'burns up' or oxidises pollutants, such as nitrogen compounds from factories and cars.

Pollutants that aren't processed then fall back to earth in the form of acid rain.

"The chemical details of how the atmosphere removes nitric acid have not been clear," said Professor Joseph Francisco of Purdue University.

"This gives us important insights into this process."

"Without that knowledge we really can't understand the conditions under which nitric acid is removed from the atmosphere."

"This becomes important in emerging industrial nations such as China, India and Brazil where there are automobiles and factories that are unregulated."

"This chemistry will give us insight into the extent that acid rain will be a future concern."

The newly discovered molecule has two hydrogen bonds, which allows it to form a six-sided ring structure.

Hydrogen bonds are normally weaker than other bonds between the atoms in a molecule, known as covalent bonds.

Covalent bonds are 20 times stronger than hydrogen bonds -- yet these two hydrogen bonds are strong enough to affect the atmosphere.

"We've speculated about this unusual atmospheric species for many years, and then to actually see it and learn about its properties was very exciting," said Professor Marsha Lester of the University of Pennsylvania.

"The reaction involving this molecule proceeds faster as you go to lower temperatures, which is the opposite of most chemical reactions."

"The rate of reaction also changes depending on the atmospheric pressure, and most reactions don't depend on external pressure."

"The molecule also exhibits unusual quantum properties."

Professor Lester pointed out that it was these unusual properties that left the molecule undiscovered for so long.

"This is not how we explain chemistry to high school students," she said.

The research effort centres on so-called metamaterials -- these are artificially engineered structures that have properties not known iin nature, such as the ability to reverse light.

"We are not actually cloaking anything," said Jason Valentine, one of the researchers working on the project.

"I don't think we have to worry about invisible people walking around any time soon."

"To be honest, we are just at the beginning of doing anything like that."

Two different type of metamaterial are being investigated -- one is a fishnet of metal layers, while another uses tiny silver wires, both at the nanoscale level.

Using these metamaterials, researchers have created a scenario where a physical substance has a 'negative refractive index' -- changing the way that it is percieved.

"In naturally occurring material, the index of refraction, a measure of how light bends in a medium, is positive," said Valentine.

"When you see a fish in the water, the fish will appear to be in front of the position it really is."

"Or if you put a stick in the water, the stick seems to bend away from you."

But Valentine pointed out that negative refraction leads to some unusual effects.

"Instead of the fish appearing to be slightly ahead of where it is in the water, it would actually appear to be above the water's surface," he said.

"It's kind of weird."

For now, the technology could be used to improve optical devices -- leading to better microscopes that can observe a living virus in situ.

"However, cloaking may be something that this material could be used for in the future," Valentine said.

"You'd have to wrap whatever you wanted to cloak in the material."

"IIt would just send light around."

"By sending light around the object that is to be cloaked, you don't see it."

"Menthol stimulates the cooling receptors in the lung and oral pharynx," said Professor Gregory Connolly Howard of the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), co-author of the paper.

"It makes smoking easier."

Menthol appears as an additive in around 90% of cigarettes manufactured in the US -- but only a third of these brands are explicitly marketed as mentholated.

"For decades, the tobacco industry has carefully manipulated menthol content not only to lure youth but also to lock in lifelong adult customers," said co-author Professor Howard Koh, associate dean of Public Health Practice at HSPH.

Yet the tobacco industry denies that there is any strategy to deliberately hook young smokers.

"There is very little direct relevant data that shows menthol affects initiation," said David Sylvia, a spokesperson for Philip Morris, makers of Marlboro amongst others.

Sylvia was adamant that their products 'were not designed for nor marketed to underage smokers.'

The study also looked at the ethnicity of adult smokers -- they found that African Americans were more likely to smoke menthol cigarettes than any other group.

"This is another example of the cynical behaviour of the tobacco industry to hook teens and African Americans to a deadly addiction," said Professor Connolly.

"This is after the industry told the American public it had changed its marketing practices."

A bill currently before Congress would give the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) powers to regulate additives such as menthol -- at present, they have no authority to act.

"The FDA bill provides the vehicle to end the hypocrisy and save the lives of the young and a targeted minority group," Professor Connolly said.

Existing DNA manipulation techniques use chemicals, but long strands can often break.

The new process, developed by Kyohei Terao from Kyoto University, and his colleagues from the University of Tokyo, uses microscopic bobbins and hooks controlled by lasers to delicately hold and straighten a DNA strand.

The bobbins and hooks are made from a polymer called SU-8 photoresist that doesn't bind to DNA, thereby preventing damage.

The laser acts in effect as set of 'optical tweezers'.

"When a DNA molecule is manipulated and straightened by microhooks and bobbins, the gene location can be determined easily with high-spatial resolution," said Terao.

The technique isn't very different traditional sewing and knitting, apart from the scale.

"The microhooks and bobbins were inspired by manipulation of thread using our fingers," Terao said.

The breakthough was described as 'an excellent idea to fabricate unique microtools that enables us to manipulate a single giant DNA molecule' by Yoshinobu Baba, a researcher into biological microdevices at Nagoya University, Japan.

He believes that the process will eventually be useful for DNA sequencing and molecular electronics, amongst other applications.

Other scientists in the field also welcomed the development, but noted that real-world applications for the technique are a long way off.

"This is an impressive piece of microengineering," said Edwin Cuppen of the Netherlands Institute for Developmental Biology in Utrecht.

"However, relevant applications are still pretty far down the road -- there will be a major challenge for applying this to complex genomes such as those of vertebrates and man."

"Our biggest problem is that we are too good to be true," said John Rivera, chairman of Sustainable Power Corporation.

"We can literally replace every gallon of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel in the United States using just 12 per cent of the waste by-products in the country."

Rivera has spent 21 years and US$31 million (£15.6 million) developing the secret process.

A reactor is filled with farm waste such as hulls and cracked soy beans -- what results is a biogenic crude oil dubbed Vertroleum that Rivera claims is superior to crude from fossil sources.

Rivera contends that products made from Vertroleum burn at near 100 per cent efficiency -- minimising pollution and waste heat.

"Anyone you tell about this will call you a liar," said Rivera.

What is even more unbelievable is that the sole by-product from the process is an organic fertiliser.

"The fertiliser is worth about 15 cents (8p) per pound, but the fuel by-product is worth much more," said Gerald Brent, general manager of Sustainable Power Corporation.

Sustainable Power Corporation are now developing a new facility that will boast 400 reactors -– each producing 6,000 gallons of crude daily -– and a Vetroleum-powered 500 megawatt energy plant, capable of supplying 400,000 homes with power.

Brent hopes that the facility will be ready within the next 12 to 18 months.

"We have to build this from the ground up," he said.

"This is just our proof-of-concept."

About 10,000 litres of milk have been sent to EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel in the last two weeks.

"Unfortunately, a lot of the milk had gone off and some of the cartons had burst," said an unnamed Commission official.

"So it was all a bit smelly and messy."

Rather than throw away milk that is worth next to nothing, they came up with the novel idea of posting it to the EU Commission as a way of drawing attention to their plight.

"We have to, unfortunately, throw it away," said Michael Mann, spokesperson for Commissioner Boel.

"We are conscious of their concerns, but we don't think it's a good idea and they should send it to a good cause."

World prices for milk have risen -- but this has not translated into higher prices for German farmers, one reason why they went on strike in May.

During the dispute they fed milk to calves in public and poured it on fields as fertiliser.

As a result, the supermarket chain Lidl raised milk prices.

The latest protest has been prompted by the EU's decision in April to raise milk quotas by 2% to curb rising prices and meet growing demand.

Boel has pleaded with the farmers to find a better way to demonstrate their anger.

"If you would like to keep on sending milk, I can suggest that it would be better put to a good use in your local area," she said.

"We found that imagery leads to a short-term memory trace that can bias future perception," said Joel Pearson, lead author of the study and research associate at the Vanderbilt Department of Psychology.

"This is the first research to definitively show that imagining something changes vision both while you are imagining it and later on."

"These findings are important because they suggest a potential mechanism by which top-down expectations or recollections of previous experiences might shape perception itself."

The findings of the study show that the process can happen instantaneously.

"You might think you need to imagine something 10 times or 100 times before it has an impact," said Frank Tong, co-author of the study and associate professor of psychology.

"Our results show that even a single instance of imagery can tilt how you see the world one way or another, dramatically, if the conditions are right."

Previous research into vision has been stymied by the subjective nature of how we perceive imagery.

"It has been very hard to pin down in the laboratory what exactly someone is experiencing when it comes to imagery, because it is so subjective," said Tong.

"We found that the imagery effect, while found in all of our subjects, could differ a lot in strength across subjects."

"So this might give us a metric to measure the strength of mental imagery in individuals and how that imagery may influence perception."

The study may help to settle a long-standing debate in the field -- is vision a literal representation of what is there or is it something more abstract?

"More recently, with advances in human brain imaging, we now know that when you imagine something parts of the visual brain do light up and you see activity there," said Pearson.

"So there's more and more evidence suggesting that there is a huge overlap between mental imagery and seeing the same thing."

"Our work shows that not only are imagery and vision related, but imagery directly influences what we see."

"Mars saw the potential this research holds to help accelerate what farmers have been doing since the beginning of time with traditional breeding, ultimately improving cocoa trees, yielding higher quality cocoa and increasing income for farmers," said Dr Howard-Yana Shapiro, global director of plant science for Mars.

"The genome is the road map."

"It's our responsibility to the farmers to do this work."

Results of the five year project will be freely available in the public domain through the Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture.

As well as investing $10 million in a joint project with IBM to use supercomputers in the effort, Mars will also work closely with scientists from the US Agriculture Department (USAD).

"Once we have the whole genome, they'll be able to go in and look at all the genes they're interested in," said Ray Schnell, a geneticist at USAD's subtropical horticulture research station in Florida.

"They'll all be interested in flavour genes."

Participants in the project were keen to talk up the potential benefits of the project to Africa -- the continent produces around 70 percent of the world's cocoa.

"This collaboration is an opportunity for us to apply our computational biology and supercomputing expertise to help improve an economically important agricultural crop," said Dr Mark Dean, vice president of Technical Strategy and Global Operations at IBM Research.

"We look forward to helping the agricultural community in Africa, and in other emerging markets."

Oxytocin is a natural hormone that assists childbirth and promotes bond between mothers and babies.

Now scientists have determined that oxytocin is effective in curing anxiety, social phobias, and could even be used to alleviate the effects of autism.

"Tests have shown that oxytocin reduces anxiety levels in users," said Professor Paul Zak, a neuroscientist based at California's Claremont Graduate University.

"It is a hormone that facilitates social contact between people."

"What's more, it is a very safe product that does not have any side effects and is not addictive."

Zak tested the hormone on hundreds of patients and found that it curbed the instincts of wariness and suspicion that lead to anxiety.

“We’ve seen that it makes you care about the other person," said Zak.

"It also increases your generosity towards that person."

"That’s why [the hormone] facilitates social interaction.”

Oxytocin could provide a lifeline to those caring for people with autism, a notoriously difficult condition to treat.

Researchers in New York found that oxytocin reduces the adverse effects of autism such as anxiety.

“Oxytocin does not cure autism, but it does reduce the symptoms,” Professor Zak said.

“So there is a reduction of anxiety in autistic patients, and the oxytocin can induce them to do things like make eye contact with other people and look at their faces -- something autistic people find hard to do.”

Dr Bart Jacobs of Radboud University in the Netherlands used a laptop to clone a smartcard used to enter a public building in the country.

"An employee can be cloned by bumping into that person with a portable card reader," said Dr Jacobs.

"The person whose identity is being stolen may then be completely unaware that anything has happened."

"At the technical level there are currently no known countermeasures."

The Dutch government was so alarmed to hear of the breach that they posted armed guards at all buildings using the smartcards -- the guards will remain until the Mifare smartcards are replaced.

"We take this extremely seriously," said a spokesperson for the Dutch Interior Ministry.

"It's a national security issue."

"We're in the process of replacing the cards of all 120,000 civil servants at central government level at a cost of about €5 (£4) for each card."

Jacobs also travelled to London, where he used the same technique to ride around the city's public transport system for free -- the Oyster smartcard used in London also features Mifare chips.

He again used a laptop to reverse-engineer the algorithm used in the Mifare chip.

Transport for London (TfL) played down the significance of the discovery.

"This was not a hack of the Oyster system," said a spokesman for TfL.

"It was a single instance of a card being manipulated."

The manufacturers of the Mifare chip, NXP Semiconductors (a spin-off from Royal Dutch Philips), confirmed that they are fully aware of the issues around the compromised platform.

"We are aware that the Dutch researchers have reverse engineered the algorithm and we are taking this issue very seriously," said a spokesperson for the company.

"We've informed all of our system integrators and advised them to closely assess their systems."

"We're talking to the guys at Radboud University and have identified various counter measures."

Experts are unambiguous about the steps that now need to be taken.

"You only have to walk down the street to see contactless access control systems everywhere," said Adam Laurie, a computer security researcher.

"It used to be a magnetic strip, now it's a card held up to a reader on the wall."

"A large percentage of these will have Mifare technology and are very vulnerable to attack."

"They should all be replaced."

"Coffee drinkers can be reassured that coffee does not increase their risk of death," said lead author Dr Esther Lopez-Garcia of the University of Madrid.

The study looked at the risk of mortality for women who consumed four to five cups a day against those who didn't drink coffee.

Risk of death due to all causes was 26 per cent lower for the five-a-day coffee drinkers.

Women who drank two to three cups of coffee a day had a 17 per cent lower risk.

Whilst men also showed similar benefits, the difference was not deemed to be statistically significant.

For both genders, there was no greater or lower risk of death from cancer among coffee drinkers.

"Coffee consumption has been linked to various beneficial and detrimental health effects, but data on its relation with death were lacking," said Dr Lopez-Garcia.

"Regular coffee consumption was not associated with an increased mortality rate in either men or women."

The study is the latest in a long line that have rehabilitated foods that were dismissed as unhealthy.

"It's also happened with other foods and nutrients, for example with fats," Dr Lopez-Garcia said.

"They used to be bad -- now it has been discovered they are not so bad, even can be good for our health."

The report states that coffee needs further investigation for its potential benefits to health.

"The possibility of a modest benefit of coffee consumption on all cause and cardiovascular disease mortality needs to be further investigated," it says.

But Dr Lopez-Garcia is warning people with certain medical conditions to be careful about taking up coffee as a result of the study.

"We need more research," she said.

"We are very cautious when we say coffee is not bad because for people with cardiovascular disease, hypertension and insomnia, clearly it's not a good idea to start drinking coffee."

German archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius discovered the Headless Pyramid in 1842 -- but it was lost beneath the sands of Saqqara, a royal burial site near Cairo.

"After Lepsius the location of the pyramid was lost and the substructure of [the] pyramid never known," said Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

"It was forgotten by people until we began to search this area and a hill of sand, maybe 25 feet {7.6 metres) high."

"Now we are sure that this pyramid is of a style of a pyramid of Dynasty V and belongs to a king called Menkauhor."

"There were missing pyramids of the kings, and this is one of them."

Menkauhor ruled Egypt in the 24th century BC and is the only Fifth Dynasty ruler whose pyramid has not been identified so far.

Archaeologists have not found inscriptions with the name of the pharaoh so far -- the attribution is based on architectural features.

As well as large red granite blocks at the entrance to the burial chamber, the lid of the sarcophagus is made of grey schist -- all characteristic of the Old Kingdom.

"The material of this sarcophagus was never used in the Middle Kingdom," Hawass said.

"The Middle Kingdom pyramids...have complicated corridors until you reach the burial chamber."

"Without discovering any inscription I tell you this is Old Kingdom."

"The substructure is exactly Dynasty V."

Hawass will continue investigating Saqqara -- he believes that the only one third of the site has been fully investigated.

"You never know what secrets the sands of Egypt hide," he said.

"I always believe there will be more pyramids to discover."

The study used a simple marker pen costing $6 (£3) to darken the rust-coloured breast feathers of the New Jersey barn swallow -- making lighter coloured birds look like those naturally darkest.

As a result, their biochemistry began to change -- they started producing more testosterone,

"The experimental manipulation didn't just improve their looks in the eyes of the females, it actually changed their body chemistry," said Professsor Rebecca Safran, lead author and an evolutionary biologist based at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

"A male barn swallow can't look in a mirror and assess his social status."

"But if he flies into a group of other swallows, the birds will quickly assess it for him and give him a sense of where he fits in."

What surprised researchers was that the changes in testosterone manifested one week after the birds were marked -- a surprisingly short period of time for such a drastic change.

"Other females might be looking at them as being a little more sexy, and the birds might be feeling better about themselves in response to that," said Professor Kevin McGraw, co-author and a fellow evolutionary biologist based at Arizona State University.

Safran paraphrased Shakespeare to draw a parallel between avian and human behaviour.

"It's the 'clothes make the man' idea," she said.

"It's like you walk down the street and you're driving a Rolls Royce and people notice."

"And your physiology accommodates this."

But shr thinks that we should be wary of making too many comparisons between birds and humans.

Barn swallows are 'socially monogamous and genetically promiscuous, same as humans,' she said.

"There are some interesting parallels, but we do need to be careful about making them."

Harvard researchers were inspired by a talk given by Dr Rodney Bee, a chemist with Unilever -- the company is a major producer of ice cream, amongst other food products.

Bee showed how esing a simple kitchen mixer, he had managed to create ice cream with bubbles one micrometer in size.

"Small bubbles on that scale never last because of surface tension -- they instantly disappear." said Professor Howard Stone of Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

"What Rodney showed on that screen was extraordinary,"

"I asked him how he created his foams, and he said he used an ordinary kitchen mixer."

"The next day I went out and bought a kitchen mixer for the lab."

SEAS graduate student Emilie Dressaire worked with Stone to formulate a syrupy mixture of simple sugars and water.

When the mixture was whipped, a foam was created with a crystalline structure that protected the bubbles from popping.

"The bubbles are fairly happy in it," said Dressaire.

"We were able to keep them for a year."

The bubbles could be modified for other uses, such as cosmetics or as contrast agents for ultrasound imaging.

They could even be used to replace fat molecules in food products, such as ice cream and mayonnaise.

"The lifetime is so long, which is the interesting part for industry," Dressaire said.

The Russian-made toilet began malfunctioning last week, but the exact cause in unclear.

Until the problem is resolved, astronauts have been improvising by using plastic bags to deal with waste.

But their ordeal should end soon -- Nasa will launch the Discovery space shuttle this weekend with replacement parts on board,

"We will be taking some spare parts up," said Allard Beutel, spokesperson for Nasa.

"You can imagine you are having guests over and your one and only bathroom is broken."

"Clearly this is something you want to have working."

To make room for the replacement parts, Nasa are leaving behind items of non-essential cargo -- including several wrenches and a spare part for the space station's oxygen generator.

"Clearly, having a working toilet is a priority for us, so some of these things that we didn't need for the next six months or so could wait," said Scott Higginbotham, Discovery's payload manager.

Discovery's commander sounded an optomistic note as he arrived at the launch site.

"We hear it's in great shape," said Mark Kelly, referring to the shuttle's readiness for flight.

"As soon as we get a couple more spare parts that I'm sure some of you guys have heard about...we're going to be all ready to go."

A team from the biology and the mathematics departments of Davidson College in North Carolina and Missouri Western State University added genes to E. coli bacteria to solve a classic mathematical puzzle, known as the burnt pancake problem.

The burnt pancake problem involves a stack of pancakes of different sizes, each of which has a golden and a burnt side.

This stack must be sorted so that the largest pancake is on the bottom and all pancakes are golden side up.

Each flip reverses the order and the orientation of one or several consecutive pancakes.

The aim of the exercise is to stack them correctly in the fewest number of flips.

To solve the problem, the researchers used fragments of DNA as the pancakes.

Genes were added from a different type of bacterium to enable the E. coli to flip the DNA 'pancakes'.

A gene that made the bacteria antibiotic-resistant was also added, but only when the DNA fragments had been flipped into the right order.

The time required to reach the mathematical solution with the bacteria reflects the minimum number of flips needed to solve the burnt pancake problem.

"The system offers several potential advantages over conventional computers" says Dr Karmella Haynes of Davidson College, a lead researcher.

"A single flask can hold billions of bacteria, each of which could potentially contain several copies of the DNA used for computing."

"These 'bacterial computers' could act in parallel with each other, meaning that solutions could potentially be reached quicker than with conventional computers, using less space and at a lower cost.

Made of resin from the Boswellia plant, frankincense has not been previously been thought to have any effect on the brain.

"In spite of information stemming from ancient texts, constituents of Boswellia had not been investigated for psychoactivity," said Professor Raphael Mechoulam of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, one of the research study's co-authors.

"We found that incensole acetate, a Boswellia resin constituent, when tested in mice lowers anxiety and causes antidepressive-like behaviour."

"Apparently, most present day worshippers assume that incense burning has only a symbolic meaning."

When administered to mice, incensole acetate affects areas of the brain involved with emotion as well as areas known to be affected by current anxiety and depression medications.

The compound activates a mammalian brain protein called TRPV3, known to play a role in the perception of warmth on the skin.

Incensole acetate's effects could point the way to an entirely new class of depression and anxiety drugs.

"Perhaps Marx wasn't too wrong when he called religion the opium of the people," said Dr Gerald Weissmann, editor-in-chief of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal.

"Morphine comes from poppies, cannabinoids from marijuana, and LSD from mushrooms -- each of these has been used in one or another religious ceremony."

"Studies of how those psychoactive drugs work have helped us understand modern neurobiology."

"The discovery of how incensole acetate, purified from frankincense, works on specific targets in the brain should also help us understand diseases of the nervous system."

"This study also provides a biological explanation for millennia-old spiritual practices that have persisted across time, distance, culture, language, and religion -- burning incense really does make you feel warm and tingly all over!"

In France, this winter's harvest comprised 20 tonnes of best quality black truffles -- half of what had been predicted.

"The bad harvest years, which used to be the exception, are becoming the norm," said Jean-Charles Savignac, President of the Federation Francaise des Trufficulteurs (FFT).

Prolonged droughts in France, Italy, and Spain -- the main truffle producing countries -- are devastating as the truffle cannot go more than three weeks without water.

Rising temperatures are also blamed for the drop in yields -- a situation that has pushed the prices up for truffles on the open market.

One kilo of black truffles can fetch as much as €1,000 (£794), three times the cost at the end of the 1990s.

Whilst high prices can be lucrative for producers, they are concerned about an uncertain future for their crops.

"There are a lot of plantations coming to maturity, but at the moment we cannot say what the future will hold for truffle production," said Jean-Pierre Audivert, President of the Departmental Federation of Perigord Truffle Producers.

Wholesalers are now trying to meet some of the shortfall by importing inferior truffles from China.

They may be similar in appearance to Europe's black truffle and cost a fraction of the price, but they are lacking in flavour -- the FFT has called on the European Union to ban imports.

Producers see their salvation in finding new ways to adapt to the weather and increase yields.

Researchers are now investigating ways in which truffles can be better protected from drought and frost.

"The idea is not to suffer, but to understand in order to react," said Jean-Marc Olivier, Director of Research at the French National Institute for Agronomical Research

"The production zones of the Mediterranean plain are on the frontline and will face further difficulties if we do not adapt."

The Arch was created in 1980 by Moore and is a six metre tall sculpture modelled on sheep collar bones joined together.

A project exploring the use of rock engineering techniques for cultural heritage conservation hopes that the piece could be resurrected at its original site on the banks of the Serpentine Lake.

"Rock engineering techniques are usually used for stabilisation of tunnels and rock slopes," said Dr John Harrison of Imperial College, "but the basic concepts of understanding how rock behaves when it is subjected to loads are immediately applicable to stone sculptures."

"We can now apply this knowledge to preserving some of the nation’s most important and historic artworks."

The piece was originally dismantled over concerns that it was structurally unsound -- the team needed to find out why that was the case.

As well as experts from Imperial College, assistance was also sought from Tate Galleries and Glasgow School of Art.

"We were delighted when the Henry Moore Foundation invited us to study the Arch as a subject for our research," said Dr Angela Geary from the Glasgow School of Art.

"It was a huge practical challenge, but it was very exciting and motivating to be working on such a significant real-world problem."

Rock samples were taken for testing and and laser scans of the dismantled stone blocks were used to generate 3D computer models of the sculpture for analysis.

The team concluded that the unusual shape, the poor location of the structural joints holding the blocks together, and the use of brittle travertine stone all combine to make it unsteady.

Solutions for these problems include attaching the rock legs and top section together with fibreglass and placing the structure on a base of reinforced concrete.

"The outcome is a positive one for everyone involved, and our aim is now to expand across a wide range of artefacts from armoury to pottery and painting," said Derek Pullen, Head of Sculpture Conservation at Tate Galleries.

"Our methods could remove much of the guesswork from planning conservation treatment and could become an indispensable tool in the care of collections."

Clean Gum is designed to rid the streets of litter and save local councils the £150 million they spend every year on removing it from pavements.

"The advantage of our Clean Gum is that it has great taste, it is easy to remove and has the potential to be environmentally degradable," said Professor Terence Cosgrove.

The key innovation is a polymer that attracts water in saliva -- this forms a thin film around the polymer which prevents it from becoming sticky.

"With this gum, you always get a film of water around it, and that's one of the reasons it's easy to remove and in some cases doesn't stick at all," Professor Cosgrove said.

The effort has been so successful that a company called Revolymer has now been spun off from the University to commercialise the research.

As well as being tested on the streets of Bristol, the gum was also stuck in the hair of the CEO's daughter.

Unlike conventional gum that has to be cut out with scissors, the non-stick gum was removed after several applications of shampoo.

“I am delighted with our progress," said Roger Pettman, CEO of Revolymer.

"In eighteen months we have converted UK technology into a commercial product significantly changing the pollution issues facing chewing gum."

“Removable, degradable chewing gum is becoming a reality."

This new approach has now yielded £2m in venture capital from Swarraton Partners and their co-investors Top Technology Ventures, the venture capital subsidiary of IP Group plc.

As part of the deal, Stephen Brooke, managing partner of Swarraton Partners, is joining the company as a non-executive director.

"I have been following the company for some time and was impressed with the speed with which it has moved from developing technology to developing products," Brooke said.

With other investments from institutions and private investors, Revolymer now has a war chest totalling £10 million.

As well as helping to commercialise Clean Gum, the company will also use the money to finance research into using polymers for detergents and drug delivery systems.

But first they have to overcome the hurdle of regulatory approval from the EU so the polymer can be used as an additive in chewing gum -- which could signal the end of a frustrating problem for local councils.

"Of all the things that end up on our streets, chewing gum is the hardest to shift," said Leith Penny, director of environment and leisure at Westminster council.

"The problem with campaigns to stop people disposing of chewing gum irresponsibly is that they do nothing to stigmatise the behaviour."

"The campaigns that did -- for drink-driving and dogs fouling the streets -- worked very well."