On the Record

“Even on the most solemn occasions I gotaway without wearing socks and hid that lackof civilization in high boots.”

A newly released letter by Albert Einstein reveals his sartorial secrets.

“There were meat-eating kangaroos with long fangs, and galloping kangaroos with long forearms, which could not hop.”

Palaeontologist Mike Archer describes some of the 20 extinct species found by his team on a fossil dig in northwest Queensland, Australia.

Sources: New Scientist, BBC

Scorecard

Chinese music

Officials in China are asking the public to pick 30 songs to be broadcast from the country's first lunar probe, scheduled to launch next year.

Opera singing

Scholars in Bologna digup the body of the world's most famous castrato singer, Farinelli, to study the physical attributes that gave him his renowned voice.

Fish stocks

Overfishing has led to a 'jellyfish explosion' in the waters off Namibia, where the biomass of the gelatinous pests is three times that of fish.

Number Crunch

The Worldwatch Institute has mixed news about global energy trends.

19% was the amount the production of ethanol for fuel wentup by between 2004 and 2005.

24% was how much global wind-power capacity increased last year.

80% of the world's energy was derived from fossil fuels in 2005.

14.6°C was the average global temperature in 2005 — the warmest year on record.

Source: The Worldwatch Institute