Hot stuff!!

Shrimps survive boiling seas two miles down
By Charles Clover, Environment EditorLast Updated: 1:36am GMT 11/12/2006 

Scientists have discovered species of shrimp, mussel and clam living at temperatures near boiling point 1.8 miles down in the equatorial Atlantic. They are unable to explain how the shrimp are able to live without being cooked on the walls of volcanic vents carrying fluids from the Earth’s core. Scientists from the Census of Marine Life, a ten-year project to catalogue the 200,000 species thought to live in the oceans, measured temperatures of 765F (407C) in the fluids emerging from the hottest vent – hot enough to melt lead. Yet nearby there were shrimp and large beds of mussels and clams living exposed to pulses of water at temperatures of up to 176F (80C) in a wholly dark environment, where the surrounding water is at 36F (2C) – nearly freezing point. Somehow the chemistry of the shrimp, and other deep-sea life forms observed, allows them to tolerate both the extremes in temperature and the high concentrations of heavy metals in emissions from the vents. According to scientists who have eaten them, the shrimp are foul-tasting because of the amount of hydrogen sulphide in their bodies.

Daily Telegraph

The answer is out there somewhere

Scientologists get £270,000 subsidy
By Adam Lusher, Sunday TelegraphLast Updated: 1:37am GMT 11/12/2006 

The controversial Church of Scientology has been granted a subsidy of more than £270,000 a year in public money, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal. Scientology’s lawyers used European rulings and Government equality regulations to force the City of London corporation to grant an 80 per cent rates discount for its new centre near St Paul’s Cathedral. The “church”, it is believed, is now pressing to pay nothing at all. The corporation confirmed that this discount was on the basis that Scientology is a “charity”, despite the fact that the Charity Commission has refused to register it. The discount, referred to as a “mandatory rate relief”, has been granted even though the Church of Scientology has estimated global assets of $398 million (£203 million), is supported by film stars including Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and was once described as “corrupt, sinister and dangerous” by a High Court judge. Scientology has attracted controversy regularly since L Ron Hubbard, the American science fiction writer, founded it in 1954, teaching that humans are immortal beings with a spiritual side called the “thetan”.

Daily Telegraph

Get your skates on…

Skates give Indian factory workers true ‘mobility of labour’
By Amrit Dhillon in
Delhi, Sunday TelegraphLast Updated: 1:37am GMT 11/12/2006 

Workers in Indian textile factories have given a new meaning to the idea of rolling production lines – by learning to do their jobs on skates rather than foot. More than 2,000 staff in mills in the industrial city of Coimbatore have been trained to do their work on roller skates in a bid to speed their progress across the shop floor and improve productivity. Previously, walking up and down the length of a 150ft loom or spinning frame could take several minutes, and proved exhausting by the end of a shift. Now, however, employees glide around effortlessly in what is fast becoming a standard industry practice.

Daily Telegraph