An Age of Magic

Facebook alert-button proves dangerously popular.

More than 200 Facebook users have reported suspicious behaviour online since the launch of an anti-abuse application last month, figures showed today. Investigators saw more than a seven-fold increase in the number of reports from the social networking site since the launch of the safety button which aims to protect children from bullying, suspected grooming and other abuse. A total of 211 people used the site’s ClickCEOP button to report abuse since July 12, compared with just 28 users who reported abuse through the site in the month before its launch.

The safety button has been at the centre of an embarrassing public row for Facebook, one of the world’s most popular social-networking sites, which resisted requests for a so-called panic button on all young people’s profile pages. The American company faced an unprecedented fusillade of pleas from Ceop, police chiefs, politicians, charities and campaign groups who supported its use.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Protecting your credit cards from inside your wallet.

Another son, another birthday – with five of them it seems I am buying birthday gifts all year round. This time it is son number two and he turns 23 next week, he lives on the other side of the world too so I cannot simply take him out and let him choose what he wants. This kid has a habit of losing things and has in the past two years dropped his passport in a creek – don’t ask how – and when he pulls his hanky out of his pocket there followView posts a shower of coins and notes. Men always store their money in their back pocket…why?

He has just gotten his first credit card so what would suit him is an rfid blocking wallet; they protect your chip and pin card and guard against fraud as well. Your details cannot be scanned and they work even when folded over. Brilliant idea!

Popularity: 17% [?]

Eureka – water on the moon!

Scientists have discovered that there is water everywhere on the moon. Analysis of moon rock suggests that a chemically altered form of water is bound up within a volcanic lunar mineral. The findings lead experts to believe that water is widespread on both the outside and inside of the moon.

And the discovery means that it would be far easier for humans to one day set up a space station on the moon’s surface. Tapping a local supply of water would be a lot more convenient than ferrying it from Earth while it can also be split into its two component gases. Hydrogen can be turned into rocket fuel to enable astronauts to explore other planets in the solar system and oxygen is vital for breathing.

To be precise, the scientists found evidence of hydroxide ions – negatively charged molecules identical to those of water but missing one hydrogen atom. The hydroxide was discovered in apatite, a calcium phosphate mineral, the researchers reported in the journal Nature.

The discovery was made after US researchers examined a basalt rock underlying the moon’s surface that was formed by lava flows billions of years ago and brought back to Earth by the 1971 Apollo 14 mission.

Popularity: 19% [?]