"The startling reaction between Diet Coke and Mentos sweets, made famous in thousands of YouTube videos, finally has a scientific explanation. A study in the US has identified the prime factors that drive the fizzy plumes from Coke bottles: the roughness of the sweet and how fast it plummets to the bottle's base.

"If you drop a pack of Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke, you get this huge fountain of spray and Diet Coke foam coming out," says Tonya Coffey, a physicist at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. "This was a good project for my students to study because there was still some mystery to it."

When mint or fruit Mentos are dropped into a fresh bottle of Diet Coke, a jet of Coke whooshes out of the bottle's mouth and can reach a height of 10 metres. Theories abound as to why this happens, with some bloggers speculating that it is an acid-base reaction because Coke is acidic.

Experiments in a 2006 edition of the Discovery Channel programme Mythbusters suggested the chemicals responsible for the reaction are gum arabic and gelatine in the sweets, and caffeine, potassium benzoate and aspartame in the Coke. But there have been no rigorous scientific studies of the reaction until now."

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"ON 12 October 2000, the destroyer USS Cole hove into port at Aden in Yemen for routine refuelling. As the vessel took on fuel oil, a small boat drew alongside it. Suicide bombers inside the boat detonated a cache of explosives, blasting a 20-metre hole in the destroyer's hull and killing 17 of its crew.

The attack was a stark reminder of the risks the crews of naval ships face when they are forced to put in at potentially unfriendly ports.

Now some members of Congress believe they have a way to keep ships out of harm's way and prevent similar incidents happening in the future. A bill recently passed by the House of Representatives aims to make many more of the ships in the US naval fleet nuclear powered, including amphibious assault ships that carry troops into combat. The benefit will be two-fold, argue proponents of the bill."

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"The US space agency yesterday placed an order for new spacesuits for the 2015 launch of the new Orion capsule, designed to replace the aging space shuttle and re-establish humans on the Moon as part of the Constellation Program.

US firm Oceaneering International won the contract worth up to $745 million, which involves design, testing, evaluation and production of a suit that can we worn in two different styles.

The "default" version (see image, right) is designed for use during launch and landing aboard Orion, trips to the International Space Station, and spacewalks for contingency operations.

It will also be used to protect astronauts against unforeseen circumstances like cabin leaks.
Walking boots

For expeditions on the lunar surface, though, astronauts will be able to replace certain parts of that suit with other components to create a version more suited for strolling (see image, lower right).

The suit will need to cope with a large number of moonwalks with minimal maintenance during the planned six-month lunar outpost expeditions.

The current spacesuits used by spacewalking astronauts were designed for weightless floating in space, not walking on the Moon, says, project manager for the spacesuit system at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, US.

"They were built to solve a completely different set of problems," he says. Astronauts on the Moon will need lighter-weight suits that can bend and be easily manoeuvred, he added.

Suits and the life-support systems that go with them will be needed for up to four astronauts on Moon voyages and as many as six space station travellers."

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"The case of the uncooperative soil is closed--for the moment, at least. NASA scientists announced yesterday that the Phoenix Mars Lander had succeeded in getting a stubborn pile of dirt to fall through a metal sieve into the first of eight ovens designed to analyze the soil's chemical composition.

Mission controllers had tried half a dozen times since the soil was scooped up and dumped onto the instrument deck last Friday to dislodge the sample by vibrating the metal screen above oven number four. On Monday they even tested a backup procedure--canting the shovel at the end of the probe's robotic arm and shaking it to dribble soil a bit at a time [see video below].

But when a seventh and final round of screen-shaking Tuesday night stopped abruptly, researchers found that the dirt had finally passed through the screen into the narrow confines of the oven, no wider than a pencil lead. "The dirt finally did start to flow and we finally got a full oven," William Boynton of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, lead scientist for Phoenix's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA), said during a press conference yesterday.

NASA doesn't have a lot of room for error: The probe has only three months to do its job of analyzing Martian soil and ice before a long, sunless arctic winter blankets it in carbon dioxide ice, most likely putting it out of commission permanently."

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"LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - European Union telecoms ministers agreed on Thursday to extend the life of the bloc's Internet security watchdog by three years as threats to the Web increase.

The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), a small body set up in 2004, was due to be closed down next year. But rising cyber-crime and attacks such as one suffered by EU member Estonia last year has triggered a rethink.

The bloc's 27 telecoms industry ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, agreed a three-year reprieve until 2012 to give time to decide how to take Greek-based ENISA forward.

The European Parliament is set to formally endorse the move next week.

ENISA's executive director, Andrea Pirotti, said network security was crucial for the European economy, which increasingly depends on a trouble-free Internet.

"The need for secure networks, systems and services will certainly not suddenly disappear in 2012," Pirotti said in a statement.

"Network and information security touches business and the daily lives of citizens in Europe. It consequently needs constant reinforcement to keep up with the evolving threats landscape," Pirotti said.

With an annual budget of 8 million euros and fewer than 50 staff, ENISA had no remit or resources to deal with cyber attacks like that experienced by Estonia last year, when the Baltic state accused Russia of causing government websites to crash."

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"OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadians will be allowed to copy legally acquired music to their iPods and computers but would be banned from getting around any digital locks that companies might apply, under new legislation introduced in Parliament on Thursday.

The bill, introduced by Industry Minister Jim Prentice, would continue to exempt Internet service providers from liability for copyright violations by their subscribers, requiring them only to pass on notices of violations rather than to take down offending material as required in the United States.

It would also allow consumers to record television and radio programs for playing back at a later time, a practice known as time-shifting, but would prohibit people from keeping them indefinitely in a personal library of recordings.

In drafting the new legislation, the government said it faced the delicate task of balancing the rights of content creators with the realities and needs of everyday life in a digital world, and also realizing the difficulty of policing possible personal infringements.

Prentice said of the issue: "It touches each and every one of us, and it is no surprise to find so many different points of view with respect to copyright."

One online group, Fair Copyright for Canada, was set up on Facebook in advance of the new bill to protest against the government's copyright plans and has 40,000 members.

Its creator, University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, focused on provisions under which it would be illegal to break digital locks."

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"The Mozilla Foundation has slated June 17 to release Firefox 3.0,the latest edition of the browser.

After releasing two release candidates (plus a third Mac-specific version), the browser developer said it hopes to be able to target next Tuesday as the official release date.

"Whenever we're asked 'when is Firefox going to be released' we endeavor to answer to the best of our abilities, but the truth of the matter is that we'll only ever ship 'when it's ready,'" the company said in a blog post. "We have a lot of indicators that help us understand when the product is ready for release: feedback from our pre-release milestones, excitement in the community and the press, availability of compatible Add-Ons, and a large active beta community helping us ensure that the release is compatible with all the various sites on the Internet."

The beta releases of Firefox 3.0 have been well-reviewed for its stability and quickness, and for its ability to have apparently finally solved a persistent memory leak that has increased the browser's memory footprint over time.

Firefox 3 required more than 34 months of development, Mozilla said. "Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 -- the best web browser, period," the company claimed. "

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"Apple says it is poised to extend the reach of its red-hot iPhone into the enterprise space. CEO Steve Jobs recently told ABC News that Apple has followed through on business user requests for push e-mail, calendar and contacts capabilities, compatibility with Microsoft Exchange, and various security features missing from the original iPhone.

"On the enterprise side, Apple has taken a huge step forward for kind of ticking off all of the boxes that enterprises want, from Cisco VPN to wiping the device remotely," said Carolina Milanesi, Gartner research director. "They are basically executing what they had promised to do."

Enhancing Productivity

Achieving growth in the enterprise space is an essential component of Apple's plan for meeting its 10 million iPhone sales target for 2008. Though the company still has much work to do to make the iPhone an enterprise hit, Jobs says Apple has already laid the groundwork.

"The business world has bought a lot of iPhones in the last year," with the "CEOs and senior executives in most of the Fortune 500 companies already having iPhones of their own," Jobs told ABC News. "And there are a lot of employees that have them at home, and they really want to use them at work."

For enterprises, productivity is key. Apple noted that the speed of its new iPhone is twice as fast over 3G than over the EDGE wireless technology featured in its original iPhone. "My impression is that it's going to be able to handle enterprise applications more quickly," said Rena Bhattacharyya, IDC research manager. "

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"NEW YORK - AT&T Inc., the country's largest Internet provider, is considering charging extra for customers who download large amounts of data.

"A form of usage-based pricing for those customers who have abnormally high usage patterns is inevitable," spokesman Michael Coe said this week.

The top 5 percent of AT&T's DSL customers use 46 percent of the total bandwidth, Coe said. Overall bandwidth use on the network is surging, doubling every year and a half.

AT&T doesn't have any specific plans or fees to announce yet, Coe said.

Most cable companies have official or secret caps on the amount of data they allow subscribers to download every month. Time Warner Cable started a trial earlier this month in Beaumont, Texas, under which it will charge subscribers who go over their monthly bandwidth cap $1 per gigabyte.

Cable companies are at the forefront of usage-based pricing because neighbors share capacity on the local cable lines, and bandwidth hogs can slow down traffic for others. Phone companies have been less concerned about congestion because the phone lines they use to provide Internet service using DSL, or Digital Subscriber Line technology, aren't shared between neighbors, but AT&T is evidently concerned about congestion higher up in the network.

Those who mainly do Web surfing or e-mail use little data and have scant reason to pay attention to traffic caps. But those who download movies or TV, particularly in high definition, can hit the caps imposed by cable companies.

Download caps could put a crimp in the plans of services like Apple Inc.'s iTunes that use the Internet to deliver video. DVD-by-mail pioneer Netflix Inc. just launched a TV set-top box that receives an unlimited stream of Internet video to a TV set for as little as $8.99 per month."

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"SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. became Microsoft Corp.'s takeover prey largely because Google Inc. established such a commanding lead in the Internet's lucrative search advertising market.

But after eluding Microsoft's grasp, Yahoo is now turning to Google to help squelch a rebellion among its shareholders who believe it should have accepted Microsoft's $47.5 billion buyout offer while it was still available last month.

Yahoo announced its decision to let Google handle some of its advertising sales late Thursday, just a few hours after revealing it unsuccessfully tried to persuade Microsoft to renew its previous offer of $33 per share. The snub caused Yahoo to conclude that there is no hope for any kind of deal with Microsoft.

Although Yahoo believes Google could help boost its annual revenue by $800 million, the advertising partnership wasn't enough to ease the disappointment of investors who had been holding out hope for a Microsoft deal.

Yahoo shares fell 85 cents, or 3.6 percent, to $22.67 in morning trading Friday after plunging 10.1 percent a day earlier. Google shares rose $12.96, or 2.3 percent, to $565.91 and Microsoft shares gained 53 cents to $28.77.

Part of the problem for Yahoo is that antitrust concerns might prevent an alliance with Google."

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