Mexican officers brought to book
Police in Mexico City, one of the most crime-ridden capitals in the world, have been told they must read at least one book a month or forfeit promotion.
The mayor of the district where the scheme is being implemented believes that it will improve their work.
There is a popular conception that Mexican police are corrupt, incompetent and lazy.
Mayor Luis Sanchez believes he can fight low standards in the force by encouraging higher levels of literacy.
Along with guns, bullet-proof vests and handcuffs, police in the district of Nezahualcoyotl will now have to take a book with them.
Regular tests
If they do not read at least one a month, they lose their chance of being promoted.
Mayor Sanchez says the reading scheme for his 1,100-strong municipal police force will make them better officers and better people.
The list of recommended titles includes such literary classics as Don Quixote, The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz, and, on a lighter note, The Little Prince.
One hindrance is that a substantial proportion of the police are semi-literate.
About 20% were not educated beyond primary level.
However, according to the mayor, classes will be given to those with reading difficulties.
There is no chance of anyone getting away without doing the reading.
The policemen will be regularly tested to make sure they have read the books they name.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4332183.stm)
Cash offer to one-girl families
Families having a single girl child in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh will be given 100,000 rupees ($2,300) in an attempt to boost the female population.
The money will be given to the child when she turns 20 and both parents would have to undergo verified birth control operations.
The state government says it is concerned at the falling female-to-male ratio - in 2001 it was 943 to 1,000. The rise in sex determination tests to abort female foetuses is also a worry.
Publicity campaign
State Chief Minister YS Rajashekhar Reddy said there would be several other benefits for families having a single girl child.
They include an annual grant of 1,250 rupees for education for the girl in classes nine to 12 (ages 14-17). In case of the death of either parent, the family would get up to 50,000 rupees immediately.
Dr Reddy said both parents would have to undergo operations certified and verified by government hospitals to qualify for the scheme.
The Andhra Pradesh government says it is also planning a major publicity campaign to promote female children.
It has named the rising Indian tennis star and local girl, Sania Mirza, as the "ambassador of the girl child of Andhra Pradesh".
The authorities are planning to erect hoardings featuring Mirza and espousing the cause of the female child.
"Your daughter may be the next champion", one of the hoardings says.
This year Mirza became first Indian woman to get to the third round of a tennis Grand Slam, with her performance in Australia.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4333159.stm)
Women urged to soften image
The South African women's team will be coached in etiquette and given tighter T-shirts in a drive to soften their image and attract sponsorship.
A top official said on Wednesday that female players who dressed and acted like men were giving women's football a bad name and needed to nurture their feminine side.
"They need to learn how to be ladies," said Ria Ledwaba, head of the women's committee at the South African Football Association (Safa).
"At the moment you sometimes can't tell if they're men or women."
The national team would be given a more shapely kit to emphasise their femininity on the pitch and would swap dowdy track suits for skirts and jackets when travelling.
"Obviously they can't wear skirts on pitch... but they will be given outfits made for women, with female shirts that are shaped for breasts," Ledwaba said.
Safa would also hold etiquette workshops to turn the players - often plucked from the streets of South Africa's sprawling townships with no schooling - into national assets.
"We need to teach them etiquette and the importance of being a role model," said Ledwaba.
"There are mothers out there who won't let their daughters play football because they think they'll start acting like boys."
The new outlook is part of a drive to attract untapped talent into the squad, which has never competed in a world tournament, and to lure sponsors.
The women's team is currently funded by mobile phone operator Vodacom, which also sponsors the men's team.
But Ledwaba said she was hoping to attract extra sponsorship from companies making products for women, such as toiletries.
Fifa president Sepp Blatter last year courted controversy when he urged women players to wear tighter shorts to distinguish them from men.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/foot...ca/4332715.stm)
Poor show by Einstein look-alikes
A New York university planned to mark the 127th birthday of genius physicist Albert Einstein by bringing dozens of his look-alikes together in a room.
But when the City University of New York placed an advert in an actors' newspaper, only one person turned up - a man originally from Afghanistan.
However, as luck would have it, Latif Rashidzada bore a striking similarity to the scientist who discovered the theory of relativity.
The university is holding a party on Monday evening with two of Einstein's former associates who are now in their 90s.
But he was the only entrant
Physicist Brian Schwartz said they had hopes of bringing lots of Einstein look-alikes along as well.
"Imagine a picture of 100 Einsteins all in one place at one time," he was quoted as saying on the WNYC radio station website.
"But actually it seems like actors are doing better than I thought because not many showed up - although we have one gorgeous Einstein who is actually from Afghanistan."
Mr Rashidzada was born in the Afghan capital Kabul but now lives in New York.
A year of events is being held globally to mark 100 years of Einstein's work.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4343725.stm)
Hitachi unveils 'fastest robot'
Japanese electronics firm Hitachi has unveiled its first humanoid robot, called Emiew, to challenge Honda's Asimo and Sony's Qrio robots. Hitachi said the 1.3m (4.2ft) Emiew was the world's quickest-moving robot yet at 6km/h (3.7 miles per hour).
Two wheel-based Emiews, Pal and Chum, introduced themselves to reporters at a press conference in Japan.
They will be guests at this month's World Expo. Sony and Honda have both built robots to showcase engineering.
Explaining why Hitachi's Emiew used wheels instead of feet, Toshihiko Horiuchi, from Hitachi's Mechanical Engineering Research Laboratory, said: "We aimed to create a robot that could live and co-exist with people."
"We want to make the robots useful for people ... If the robots moved slower than people, users would be frustrated."
Emiew - Excellent Mobility and Interactive Existence as Workmate - can move at 6km/h (3.7 miles per hour) on its "wheel feet", which resemble the bottom half of a Segway scooter.
With sensors on the head, waist, and near the wheels, Pal and Chum demonstrated how they could react to commands.
"I want to be able to walk about in places like Shinjuku and Shibuya [shopping districts] in the future without bumping into people and cars," Pal told reporters.
Hitachi said Pal and Chum, which have a vocabulary of about 100 words, could be "trained" for practical office and factory use in as little as five to six years.
Big bot battle
Robotics researchers have long been challenged by developing robots that walk in the gait of a human.
At the recent AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) annual meeting in Washington DC, researchers showed off bipedal designs.
The three designs, each built by a different research group, use the same principle to achieve a human-like gait.
Sony and Honda have both used humanoid robots, which are not commercially available, as a way of showing off computing power and engineering expertise.
Honda's Asimo was "born" five years ago. Since then, Honda and Sony's Qrio have tried to trump each other with what the robots can do at various technology events.
Asimo has visited the UK, Germany, the Czech Republic, France and Ireland as part of a world tour.
Sony's Qrio has been singing, jogging and dancing in formation around the world too and was, until last year, the fastest robot on two legs.
But its record was beaten by Asimo. It is capable of 3km/h, which its makers claim is almost four times as fast as Qrio.
Last year, car maker Toyota also stepped into the ring and unveiled its trumpet-playing humanoid robot.
By 2007, it is predicted that there will be almost 2.5 million "entertainment and leisure" robots in homes, compared to about 137,000 currently, according to the United Nations (UN).
By the end of that year, 4.1 million robots will be doing jobs in homes, said a report by the UN Economic Commission for Europe and the International Federation of Robotics.
Hitachi is one of the companies already with home cleaning robot machines on the market.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4351639.stm)
Adams patches up Sri Lanka's hurt
Dr Hunter "Patch" Adams, whose unconventional healing methods inspired a 1998 Robin Williams film, has visited Sri Lanka's tsunami-hit towns.
Dr Adams brought a troupe of 30 clowns performing juggling, unicycle riding and puppet shows to hospitals and relief camps in the country's south.
His Gesundheit Institute in the US is run according to his philosophy of using humour with healing.
Dr Adams has also taken his clowns to Bosnia, Africa and Afghanistan.
Encouragement
The first stop was the Karapitiya Hospital, near Galle.
"We do everything that makes people laugh," said Dr Adams, 59. "Laughter is the best medicine you know. I want to stop their suffering."
He told the Reuters news agency: "I decided to come to Sri Lanka as I have a great feeling of tragedy and desire to encourage people to rebuild after the tsunami."
As he bounded into children's wards, one doctor asked: "Is that man looking for the psychiatric ward?"
The troupe sprayed wards with soap bubbles and performed a puppet show for children suffering from cancer.
Train site
Dr Adams said one positive aspect of the tsunami was that it had "made people forget their greed for power and think of humanity".
He also visited the site of what is thought to be the world's worst train disaster, at Telwatta, 110km (75 miles) south of the capital, Colombo.
Tsunami waves struck the Queen of the Sea train, killing at least 800 and possibly twice that number.
"When the power of nature destroys, there is no one to blame. You have got to collect the pieces and move on your own, but the world did not forget these people," Dr Adams said.
"Giving and receiving love has become the world's currency after the tsunami."
In all, the tsunami killed more than 31,000 people in Sri Lanka.
Dr Adams graduated as a doctor in 1971 and over the past three decades has developed his philosophy that the health of an individual is intrinsically linked to the health of the family, community and the world.
His Gesundheit Institute, a free hospital and health-care "eco-community" in West Virginia, combines traditional medicine with alternative treatments and the performing arts.
The Robin Williams film, Patch Adams, tells of the doctor's own experience of receiving uncaring treatment in hospital, which inspires him to develop his unconventional humour-based healing.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4374759.stm)
Lovelorn drake ducks new owners
A web-footed loving couple have been reunited in Devon after one of them escaped his captors on Valentine's Day.
Last month Jake the drake was moved out of the Kentisbury Grange Country Park, near Lynton, because he was getting too amorous with the female ducks.
He was becoming so rampant he had even begun chasing peacocks and turkeys on the farm.
But after being taken by new owners eight miles away he escaped and found his way home to his mate, Jemima.
Jake, who is too fat to fly, walked the eight miles back to the park after escaping from his new home at Burridge on 14 February.
'Escaped foxes'
Now the Shindler family hope they can manage Jake's philandering and have decided he can stay.
Charlotte Shindler from the park said: "He is obviously very good at looking after himself because he escaped the foxes throughout those four weeks.
"We can't re-home him again, not after that journey, he will have to stay here now."
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/4380731.stm)
Scales tip with tiniest mass yet
US scientists have managed to measure the mass of a cluster of xenon atoms at just a few billionths of a trillionth of a gram - or a few zeptograms.
The record measurement is in the mass range of individual protein molecules, and the detection was made using sensitive scales developed at Caltech.
Similar techniques could pave the way for sensitive devices for use in medical and environmental testing.
Details were presented at the annual American Physical Society convention.
The scales use a small blade that vibrates in a magnetic field that generates a voltage in an attached wire.
When atoms or molecules are placed on the blade's surface, they weigh it down. The atoms are added as a very fine "spray".
Because the device is cooled, the molecules condense on the bar and add their mass to it, lowering its frequency and changing the voltage of the wire.
But to get good measurements of sophisticated biomolecules like proteins, researchers say, the scales will have to become 1,000 times more precise, capable of weighing yoctograms. One yoctogram is about the same as an individual hydrogen atom.
Devices like this could be used to make early diagnoses of disease by detecting marker molecules in a drop of blood.
"We hope to transform this chip-based technology into systems that are useful for picking out and identifying specific molecules one by one - for example, certain types of proteins secreted in the very early stages of cancer," said Michael Roukes, from the California Institute of Technology.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4394947.stm)
