Researchers at the University of Bristol have discovered that not all babies who wheeze will develop asthma in later life.

Dr Andrea Sherriff and asthma experts from the Institute of Child Health in Bristol and St George`s Hospital Medical School in London studied around 10,000 children taking part in the Children of the 90s project in Bristol.

The researchers discovered that over 60% of babies who wheezed in the first six months had stopped by 3½ years of age. When they we

Mobile phones can do more than communicate voice and data. The ability to determine the physical location of a mobile phone enables a broad range of mobile services to be offered, including location tracking of users, customised local service information and navigation. A recent EURESCOM study explored the communication needs of teenagers, how they could be met by location-based services, and which location technology is best suited.

In the EURESCOM study WOMBAT (Where are the Other Mobile B

“The occurrence of ozone mini-holes over Europe increases and any ozone layer recovery could only become measurable around 2010 at the earliest” concludes an assessment report, released today, on European research in the stratosphere. The report concerns loss of ozone, increases in ultraviolet radiation as well as the impact of aircraft on the atmosphere. It covers European research efforts during the period 1996-2000 including the Third European Stratospheric Experiment on Ozone – THESEO, which is t

Knitted pullovers protect penguins from oil discharge

Knitters around the world have pulled together to save thousands of oil-soaked little penguins on Phillip Island, southern Australia.

Ten thousand penguin-sized, pure-wool jumpers have flooded into the offices of the Tasmanian Conservation Trust in response to their call for emergency insulation for a vulnerable population of world’s smallest penguins – sometimes known as fairy penguins.

In mid-December 2001 a cru

New computer programme could settle literary debates.

To date, unlike us, computers have struggled to differentiate a page of Jane Austen from one by Jackie Collins. Now researchers in Italy have developed a program that can spot enough subtle differences between two authors’ works to attribute authorship 1 .

The program can tell a text by Machiavelli from one by Pirandello, Dante or a host of other great Italian writers. It constructed a language tree of the

Argon traces keep tabs on climate change.

A new method for detecting tiny quantities of a rare form of the element argon may help oceanographers to trace the vast undersea currents that regulate our planet’s climate.

The technique can pick out one atom of the rare isotope argon-39 (39Ar) amid 10 million billion other atoms. That’s equivalent to detecting less than a litre of water in America’s 300-mile Lake Michigan.

Philippe Collon, a nuclear physicist at the Lamon