How do you prepare orangutans to go back into the wild?

Orangutans living at a sanctuary in Indonesia are being prepared for release back into the wild.

Forest fires and poaching have led to a decrease in the population.

Some baby orangutans don't have parents to teach them how to look after themselves.

International Animal Rescue has more than 100 of the animals at its sanctuary in Ketapang in western Kaliman province.

It's set up a forest school so the oraguntans can play and learn how to survive in the wild.

It can take up to eight years for the babies to be ready to be released.

From CBBC Newsround

Solar Impulse: Oman to India journey sets new record

Solar Impulse, the fuel-free aeroplane, has successfully completed the second leg of its historic attempt to fly around the world.

Project chairman, Bertrand Piccard, piloted the vehicle from Muscat in Oman to Ahmedabad in India, crossing the Arabian Sea in the process.

Tuesday's journey took just over 15 hours.

The distance covered - 1,468km - set a new world record for a flight in a piloted solar-powered plane.

The vehicle has another 10 legs ahead of it over the course of the next five months.

Included in that itinerary will be demanding stretches when the craft has to fly over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Piccard is sharing the flying duties with project partner and CEO, Andre Borschberg, who made Monday's inaugural trip from Abu Dhabi to Muscat.

Solar Impulse arrived in Ahmedabad in darkness, its wings illuminated by LEDs, and its propellers driven by the energy stored in its batteries.

The plane had left Muscat at 06.35 (02:35 GMT) and put its wheels down at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport at 23.25 local time (17:55 GMT).

Preparations are already under way for the next leg to Varanasi in northeast India, although mission planners say that will not be for another four days, at least.

The time will be spent carrying a campaigning message on the topic ofclean technologies to the local Ahmedabad people, and the wider Indian population.

Solar Impulse heads out over the Arabian Sea

The Solar Impulse project has already set plenty of other world records for solar-powered flight, including making a high-profile transit of the US in 2013.

But the round-the-world venture is altogether more dramatic and daunting, and has required the construction of an even bigger plane than the prototype, Solar Impulse-1.

This new model has a wingspan of 72m, which is wider than a 747 jumbo jet. And yet, it weighs only 2.3 tonnes.Its light weight will be critical to its success.

So, too, will the performance of the 17,000 solar cells that line the top of the wings, and the energy-dense lithium-ion batteries it will use to sustain night-time flying.Operating through darkness will be particularly important when the men have to cross the Pacific and the Atlantic.

The slow speed of their prop-driven plane means these legs will take several days and nights of non-stop flying to complete.Piccard and Borschberg - they take it in turns to fly solo - will have to stay alert for nearly all of the time they are airborne.

They will be permitted only catnaps of up to 20 mins - in the same way a single-handed, round-the-world yachtsman would catch small periods of sleep.They will also have to endure the physical discomfort of being confined in a cockpit that measures just 3.8 cubic metres in volume - not a lot bigger than a public telephone box.

Bertrand Piccard looking fresh after more than 15 hours in the cockpit of Solar Impulse

The Solar Impulse venture recalls other great circumnavigation feats in aviation - albeit fuelled ones.In 1986, the Voyager aircraft became the first to fly around the world without stopping or refuelling.

Piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, the propeller-driven vehicle took nine days to complete its journey.Then, in 2005, this time was beaten by the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, which was solo-piloted by Steve Fossett. A jet-powered plane, GlobalFlyer completed its non-stop circumnavigation in just under three days.

From BBC Sci/ Environment

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Test driving the smart electric 'carbike'

Two students from the University of Toronto have developed a prototype electric vehicle for use within city areas.

The car/bike hybrid is connected to a smartphone and can reach speeds of up to 20mph (32km/h).

It’s a car! It’s a bike! No … it’s a plug-free electric hybrid prototype!

OK, so they need to work on the name, but it’s a smart concept: a team of PhD candidates from the University of Toronto has created an electric pedal-powered car-bike that could help beat the traffic snarls that plague our city’s streets.

“The project was inspired by my experiences commuting from Union Station,” co-creator Phil Lam says with a laugh. “But everybody’s experience is bad, right? Drivers get stuck in traffic. People who take public transit never get anywhere on time. Walking is pleasant, but it doesn’t take you very far ... Cycling, if not outright dangerous, is certainly uncomfortable for a lot of reasons. Everybody’s suffering in their own way. The answer is reinterpreting how we get around.”

Fitted with wires, bike parts and a few Tupperware containers, the prototype looks like a cross between a recumbent bicycle and a homemade sci-fi space pod. Within the lightweight aluminum chassis, however, are the seeds of a vision for healthier, happier, and more sustainable urban transport in increasingly dense cities.

You charge the vehicle’s battery by pedalling. The intensity of pedalling controls its 500-watt engine’s throttle. The engine itself is fully programmable, which means that you can easily adjust the pedal-to-engine-power ratio. Rushing to an important meeting? Let the engine do most of the work, so you don’t show up sweaty. In need of a little exercise? Pedal the roughly 45-kilogram vehicle until you feel the burn.

The three-wheeled vehicle is tall enough to be seen by other traffic, yet narrow enough to manoeuvre through congested streets. It even has a windshield to protect you from the elements and a small trunk for parcels and groceries.

Phil Lam, left, and Jonathan Lung have created a startup, Sojourn Labs, supported by U of T's Impact Centre. It took them 18 months to design and build the prototype of their electric pedal-powered car-bike.

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From: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/10/13/is_this_electric_carbike_the_answer_to_our_transit_woes.html

Purple tomatoes: Could GM crop be food of the future?

Scientists in Norwich have developed a genetically modified purple tomato, which is being produced in Canada due to European hostility to GM foods.

Their dark pigment potentially offers the same health benefits as fruit such as blueberries and could be used in everything from ketchup to pizza topping.

The prospect of genetically modified purple tomatoes reaching the shelves has come a step closer.

Their dark pigment is intended to give tomatoes the same potential health benefits as fruit such as blueberries.

Developed in Britain, large-scale production is now under way in Canada with the first 1,200 litres of purple tomato juice ready for shipping.

The pigment, known as anthocyanin, is an antioxidant which studies on animals show could help fight cancer.

Scientists say the new tomatoes could improve the nutritional value of everything from ketchup to pizza topping.

The tomatoes were developed at the John Innes Centre in Norwich where Prof Cathie Martin hopes the first delivery of large quantities of juice will allow researchers to investigate its potential.

"With these purple tomatoes you can get the same compounds that are present in blueberries and cranberries that give them their health benefits - but you can apply them to foods that people actually eat in significant amounts and are reasonably affordable,"she said.

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Although the invention is British, Prof Martin says European Union restrictions on GM encouraged her to look abroad to develop the technology.Canadian regulations are seen as more supportive of GM and that led to a deal with an Ontario company, New Energy Farms, which is now producing enough purple tomatoes in a 465 square metre (5,000sq ft) greenhouse to make 2,000 litres (440 gallons) of juice.

According to Prof Martin, the Canadian system is "very enlightened"."They look at the trait not the technology and that should be a way we start changing our thinking - asking if what you're doing is safe and beneficial, not 'Is it GM and therefore we're going to reject it completely'.

"It is frustrating that we've had to go to Canada to do a lot of the growing and the processing and I hope this will serve as a vanguard product where people can have access to something that is GM but has benefits for them."

The first 1,200 litres are due to be shipped to Norwich shortly - and because all the seeds will have been removed, there is no genetic material to risk any contamination.

FRom BBC- Sci/ Environment

Unmanned Russian rocket crashes in Kazakhstan

An unmanned Russian Proton-M rocket has crashed just seconds after its launch from the Russian Baikonur facility in Kazakhstan.

The rocket exploded over the Russian-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan where it was launched

Dramatic video footage broadcast by Russian TV shows the rocket break up before exploding into a fireball over the Baikonur cosmodrome.

Russia's Interfax news agency reported that up to 500 tonnes of poisonous rocket fuel may have been released and contaminated the crash site.

There were no reported injuries.

The rocket was carrying three satellites for Russia's Glonass (global) navigation satellite system.

It is not yet clear what caused the accident.

It is not the first incident involving a Proton-M rocket, according to the BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Moscow.

A similar rocket crashed shortly after it was launched six years ago, and in 2010 another rocket failed to put three navigation satellites into orbit.

From BBC News- Sci/Environment

Environmental change 'triggers rapid evolution'

Changes to their surroundings can trigger "rapid evolution" in species as they adopt traits to help them survive in the new conditions, a study shows.

Studying soil mites in a laboratory, researchers found that the invertebrates' age of maturity almost doubled in just 20-or-so generations.

It had been assumed that evolutionary change only occurred over a much longer timescale.

The findings have been published in the journal Ecology Letters.

"What this study shows for the first time is that evolution and ecology go hand-in-hand," explained co-author Tim Benton, professor of population ecology at the University of Leeds, UK.

"The implicit assumption has always been, from Darwin onwards, that evolution works on long timescale and ecology works on short timescales.

"The thinking was that if you squash a population or you change the environment then nothing will happen from an evolutionary point-of-view for generations and generations, for centuries."

From BBC News - SCI/Environment

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