Robot News

Star car

John Jostins, designer of Star Wars icon R2-D2, has created a hydrogen-powered car. Called the Microcab, it will presumably be slightly faster than the trundling droid.

Scorecard

Bill Gates's credentials

The world's richest college dropout will finally claim his degree from Harvard — albeit an honorary one — when he speaks at the university's commencement ceremony in June.

Cell biologists' aches

Repetitive strain injury in the biology lab could be a thing of the past with the advent of the Shake 'N Plate, an ergonomic invention that reduces the strain caused by endless hours of bacterial culture plating.

Zoo News

The calamari's off

Researchers in New Zealand are considering microwaving the largest squid ever caught... but not so they can eat it. They hope the treatment would help to thaw the 490-kilogram frozen specimen without it rotting so that they can study it.

Credit: M. SCHREIBER/AP

Born survivor

Knut, the world's new favourite bear (pictured), has shrugged off a bizarre request by animal activists that he should be killed because keepers at Berlin Zoo raised him by hand — an action that was apparently a “gross violation” of animal-protection laws.

Sources: Times Higher Education Supplement, Network World, Joint Genome Institute, Bloomberg.com, Yahoo news