Science & Technology World

The Moon has the coldest place in the Solar System measured by a spacecraft. Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has used its Diviner instrument to probe the insides of permanently shadowed craters on Earth's satellite. It found mid-winter, night-time surface temperatures inside the coldest craters in the northern polar region can dip as low as minus 249 C (26 Kelvin). "The Moon has one of the most extreme thermal environments of any body in the Solar System," said Prof David Paige. "During the middle of the day, temperatures can get up to about 400 K (127 C) at the equator; and at the poles at night, they can get very cold," the Diviner principal investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles, added. Prof Paige has been describing his instrument's latest findings here at the American Geophysical Union's (AGU) Fall Meeting, the world's largest annual gathering of Earth scientists. Diviner was part of the suite of instruments launched on LRO in June this year and has been operating continuously since it was switched on in July. In October, the spacecraft found itself in the perfect position to witness summer solstice in the Moon's southern hemisphere and winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. The Moon does have seasons - just about. The tilt of the lunar axis is 1.54 degrees. For most places, this makes no difference, but as Prof Paige explained, at the poles, this gives rise to a small, three-degree change in the elevation of the Sun on the horizon through the course of a year. "This results in a significant variation in the extent of shadows and temperatures," he said. Diviner observed the lowest summer temperatures in the darkest craters at the southern pole to be about 35 K (-238 C); but in the north, close to the winter solstice the instrument recorded a temperature of just 26 K on the south- western edge of the floor of Hermite Crater. There were also areas on the southern edges of the floors of Peary and Bosch Craters that got almost as cold. Calculations suggest one would have to travel to a distance beyond the Kuiper Belt - well beyond the orbit of Neptune - to find objects with surfaces this cold. "The way you can make something cold is to eliminate all possible other heat sources, and in these craters at the lunar poles they receive no direct sunlight and the coldest places don't even receive any indirect sunlight," Prof Paige said. "In other words, only what little radiation may be scattered from some distant cliff gets down into these areas; and they just cool off. Finally, they reach an equilibrium temperature down at those low values." The discovery adds further weight to the idea that some craters on the Moon could harbour water-ices for extended periods, and also more volatile substances that require even colder storage temperatures.

Scientists have unlocked the entire genetic code of two of the most common cancers - skin and lung - a move they say could revolutionise cancer care. Not only will the cancer maps pave the way for blood tests to spot tumours far earlier, they will also yield new drug targets, says the Wellcome Trust team. Scientists around the globe are now working to catalogue all the genes that go wrong in many types of human cancer. The UK is looking at breast cancer, Japan at liver and India at mouth. China is studying stomach cancer, and the US is looking at cancers of the brain, ovary and pancreas. " These catalogues are going to change the way we think about individual cancers " Wellcome Trust scientist Professor Michael Stratton The International Cancer Genome Consortium scientists from the 10 countries involved say it will take them at least five years and many hundreds of thousands of dollars to complete this mammoth task. But once they have done this, patients will reap the benefits. Professor Michael Stratton, who is the UK lead, said: "These catalogues are going to change the way we think about individual cancers. "By identifying all the cancer genes we will be able to develop new drugs that target the specific mutated genes and work out which patients will benefit from these novel treatments. "We can envisage a time when following the removal of a cancer cataloguing it will become routine." It could even be possible to develop MoT-style blood tests for healthy adults that can check for tell-tale DNA patterns suggestive of cancer. Russian roulette The scientists found the DNA code for a skin cancer called melanoma contained more than 30 , 000 errors almost entirely caused by too much sun exposure. " Most of the time the mutations will land in innocent parts of the genome, but some will hit the right targets for cancer " Wellcome Trust researcher Dr Peter Campbell The lung cancer DNA code had more than 23 ,000 errors largely triggered by cigarette smoke exposure. From this, the experts estimate a typical smoker acquires one new mutation for every 15 cigarettes they smoke. Although many of these mutations will be harmless, some will trigger cancer. Wellcome Trust researcher Dr Peter Campbell, who conducted this research, published in the journal Nature, said: "It's like playing Russian roulette. "Most of the time the mutations will land in innocent parts of the genome, but some will hit the right targets for cancer." By quitting smoking, people could reduce their cancer risk back down to "normal" with time, he said. The suspicion is lung cells containing mutations are eventually replaced with new ones free of genetic errors. By studying the cancer catalogues in detail, the scientists say it should be possible to find exactly which lifestyle and environmental factors trigger different tumours. Treatment and prevention Tom Haswell, who was successfully treated 15 years ago for lung cancer, believes the research will benefit the next generation: "For future patients I think it's tremendous news because hopefully treatments can be targeted to their particular genome mutations, hopefully... reducing some of the side effects we get". Cancer experts have applauded the work. The Institute of Cancer Research said: "This is the first time that a complete cancer genome has been sequenced and similar insights into other cancer genomes are likely to follow. "As more cancer genomes are revealed by this technique, we will gain a greater understanding of how cancer is caused and develops, improving our ability to prevent, treat and cure cancer." Professor Carlos Caldas, from Cancer Research UK's Cambridge Research Institute called the research "groundbreaking". "Like molecular archaeologists, these researchers have dug through layers of genetic information to uncover the history of these patients' disease. "What is so new in this study is the researchers have been able to link particular mutations to their cause. "The hope and excitement for the future is that we will eventually have detailed picture of how different cancers develop, and ultimately how better to treat and prevent them."

The UK is one of the world's most advanced countries in terms of digital communications, an Ofcom report says. The telecoms regulator said people in the UK watched more TV and sent more texts than people in many other countries, but had slower broadband. The UK remains the country with the highest proportion of households with digital TV on their main set - at 88 %. The Ofcom study compared the UK with countries including France, Germany, Italy, the US, Poland and Spain. The Netherlands, Sweden and the Irish Republic were among the other countries included in the study. It found the UK had seen the highest average rise in TV viewing in 2008 , up by 3.2 % to 3.8 hours a day. The average time spent watching TV was 3.5 hours per day across the European countries surveyed, although average viewing time fell in France and Germany. The UK's viewing figures were slightly lower than those for Italy, Poland and Spain. Text appeal And people in the US watched the most television in 2008 - an average of 4.6 hours a day, which was up 1.8 % from 2007. The survey also found that the UK was the second highest texting nation in the world, with the volume of outgoing messages estimated to be 83 billion in the year. That was second only to the US, where 830 billion text messages were sent. UK consumers also enjoy the cheapest prices for mobile phones and broadband, while the country also leads the world in online advertising. However, the UK's broadband speeds were not impressive when compared with other countries, Ofcom said. Only 10 % of UK homes could connect at over 8 megabits (Mbps) a second, compared with 37 % in the Netherlands. People in Sweden and France also had much faster speeds than those in the UK. Broadband warning A report earlier this month from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warned that the UK risked falling behind rivals if it did not invest in fast broadband. It placed the UK 21 st out of 30 countries in terms of network speeds. The OECD suggested that countries that invested in fibre networks were likely to see the best economic returns in other areas. The UK's broadband population currently stands at nearly 18 million and take-up of the technology is good but there are concerns about how quickly the UK is rolling out super-fast services. The UK government would like everyone in the country to have access to broadband speeds of 2 Mbps by 2012. And it wants to see super-fast broadband available to 90 % of the country by the end of 2017. Superfast broadband is generally regarded as speeds of 50 Mbps or above.

Mother and toddler groups, youth clubs and unemployment centres are among the winners of a competition offering free wi-fi to remote areas. From the Orkney Islands to southern Cornwall, 46 communities have been chosen to receive free wi-fi for a minimum of three years. The competition was launched by wi-fi hotspot firm Freerunner. The firm uses a combination of broadband, satellite and 3 G to connect remote communities. The connections will be paid for by a combination of advertisements and corporate sponsorship. Rural town Stromness in Orkney is a typical winner. The pier is a gathering point for both tourists and locals and having wi-fi installed will benefit a range of groups including local artists, the Ladies Lifeboat Guild and the Fisherman's Co- operative. Other winners include a church in the Midlands which is working with refugees and asylum seekers, a community centre in Stirling running a group for mothers and toddlers and a youth club in Devon. "The Freerunner mission is to give everyone free access to fast wi-fi whether you are in a coffee shop in the West End of London or a community centre in the suburbs of Newcastle," said chief executive Owen Geddes. "It is incredible to think that a small piece of relatively low cost technology is going to fundamentally change nearly 50 communities across the UK," he said. Broadband supplier BE is the first sponsor to the scheme and will roll out free broadband to those with no connection. "We agree that wi-fi should be more widely available," said Tom Williams, head of operations at BE Broadband. Ian Johnson is a project leader for the Black Country Learning Academy which is among the winners. "Many people in our area have never been online and know little about IT. Wi-fi means we can set up new internet-enabled computers allowing us to run more ...courses, improving the employment prospects of people across the region." The UK government has pledged to provide broadband running at a minimum speed of 2 Mbps (megabits per second) to all homes by 2012.