DVORAK CLASSIFICATIONS AT 18Z WERE T3.0...OR 45 KT...FROM TAFB AND SAB...WHILE AFWA GAVE ZETA A SUBTROPICAL T2.5 CLASSIFICATION. BASED ON THESE CLASSIFICATIONS...THE INITIAL INTENSITY IS HELD AT 45 KT. THE WELL-DEFINED BANDING STRUCTURES SEEN THIS MORNING HAVE ALREADY BECOME RAGGED...AND WATER VAPOR IMAGERY SHOWS DRY WESTERLIES BEGINNING TO IMPINGE ON THE WESTERN PORTION OF THE CIRCULATION. WHILE THERE COULD BE BRIEF ADDITIONAL DEVELOPMENT DURING TONIGHT'S CONVECTIVE MAXIMUM...STRONG WESTERLIES ARE NOT FAR FROM THE CYCLONE AND SHOULD OVERTAKE ZETA WITHIN 24 HOURS.

Tens of thousands of survivors are still living in tents and it is estimated that at least 80,000 new houses need to be built.

"I would like to ask the president for a house because right now it's in a bad condition," Marriatti, 39, told Reuters news agency. "I had to build a house by myself."

Sri Lanka has been paying tribute to more than 30,000 people who were killed on the island.

Around the island, small private ceremonies were held to mark the moment the waves struck.

Sweden, which lost 543 people, was the country outside Asia which suffered the most in the tsunami, closely followed by Germany. They were among the foreign tourists included in the 230,000 people around the Indian Ocean who died.

"The unthinkable happened and nothing can undo it," said Martin Jamtlid, leading a minute's silence in front of hundreds of relatives and others at a memorial ceremony in the Skansen park. King Carl XVI Gustaf and his family also attended.

"The year that has gone by has been the longest in my life, at the same time it all seems like yesterday," added Jamtlid, who lost nine family members, his voice shaking with grief.

Colin Pillinger says the images suggest the mission very nearly worked, but Beagle somehow failed to contact Earth.

He thinks the craft may have hit the ground too hard - as the atmosphere was thinner than usual because of dust storms in that region of Mars.

This may have damaged onboard instruments, preventing the call home.

The Beagle 2 lead scientist has been painstakingly studying images of the landing site in search of his spacecraft ever since it was lost on Christmas Day two years ago.

26 Named Storms (previous record: 21 in 1933)

14 Hurricanes (previous record: 12 in 1969)

Four major hurricanes hitting the U.S. (previous record: three in 2004)

Three Category 5 Hurricanes (previous record: two in 1960 and 1961)

Seven Tropical Storms before August 1 (previous record: five in 1997)

Two-Year Consecutive Total of Tropical Storms: 41 (previous record: 32 most recently in 1995-96)

Two-Year Consecutive Total of Hurricanes: 23 (previous record: 21 in 1886-87)

Two-Year Consecutive Total of Major Hurricanes: 13 (ties record in 1950-51)

Two-Year Consecutive Major Hurricane Landfalls: Seven (previous record: five in 1954-55)

Two -Year Consecutive Florida Major Hurricane Landfalls: Five (previous record: three in 1949-50)

Three-Year Consecutive Total of Tropical Storms: 57 (previous record: 43 most recently in 2002-04)

Three-Year Consecutive Total of Hurricanes: 30 (previous record: 27 in 1886-88)

Three-Year Consecutive Total of Major Hurricanes: 16 (ties record in 1949-51 and 1950-52)

Costliest Atlantic Season ($107 billion+) (previous record 2004, $45 billion)

Costliest Hurricane: Katrina ($80 billion+) (previous record Andrew, $26.5 billion - 1992 dollars)

Deadliest U.S. Hurricane since 1928: Katrina (at least 1,200)

Strongest Hurricane in the Atlantic Basin: Wilma 882 millibars (mb) (previous record: Gilbert at 888 mb)

Three of the six strongest hurricanes on record: Wilma 882 mb (1st), Rita 897 mb (4th), Katrina 902 mb (6th)

July hurricane: Emily (155 mph top sustained winds) (previous record: Dennis (150 mph) in 2005; Hurricane #1 (140 mph) in 1926.

Hurricane Epsilon became the longest lasting Atlantic hurricane on record for the month of December.

The team's first extended-range forecast for the 2006 hurricane season anticipates 17 named storms forming in the Atlantic basin between June 1 and Nov. 30. Nine of the 17 storms are predicted to become hurricanes, and of those nine, five are expected to develop into intense or major hurricanes (Saffir/Simpson category 3-4-5) with sustained winds of 111 mph or greater.

The 25,000 neurons were suspended in a specialised liquid to keep them alive and then laid across a grid of 60 electrodes in a small glass dish.

Under the microscope they looked at first like grains of sand, but soon the cells begin to connect to form what scientists are calling a "live computation device" (a brain). The electrodes measure and stimulate neural activity in the network, allowing researchers to study how the brain processes, transforms and stores information.

In the most striking experiment, the brain was linked to the jet simulator. Manipulated by the electrodes and a desktop computer, it was taught to control the flight path, even in mock hurricane-strength winds.

"When we first hooked them up, the plane 'crashed' all the time," Dr DeMarse said. "But over time, the neural network slowly adapts as the brain learns to control the pitch and roll of the aircraft. After a while, it produces a nice straight and level trajectory."

Norwegian scientists have found that killer whales - or orcas, as they are sometimes known - have overtaken polar bears at the head of the toxic table.

No other arctic mammals have ingested such a high concentration of hazardous man-made chemicals.

The Norwegian Polar Institute tested blubber samples taken from creatures in Tysfjord in the Norwegian Arctic.

The chemicals they found included pesticides, flame retardants and PCBs - which used to be used in many industrial processes.

The bird almost spoiled a televised world record attempt before it was killed with an air rifle.

The shooting caused a public outcry. Animal rights groups condemned the bird's killing last month and a website was erected in its honour.

On Friday, the bird's killer was fined for shooting a protected species.

Casualties. As the 2004 Sumatran tsunami amply demonstrated, a large tsunami poses a major risk to human life, primarily from flooding and debris impact. Evacuation is possible and can save many lives if carried out properly. However, a poorly coordinated evacuation can actually put people in harm’s way. Moreover, the short time frame between event and tsunami for local events requires that the local population be aware enough of the appropriate action to evacuate without official notification. Of the five Pacific states, California has the largest population exposed to tsunami risk. NOAA has estimated that more than one million people in California live within coastal areas vulnerable to tsunami inundation (the rushing in of the water causing flooding and battering by debris). That number does not include one million or more visitors to California's beaches on any given summer day.

Along with threatening lives and property, a giant tsunami would strike an economic blow to the state, given the vulnerability of its ports, the report said.

If a tsunami shut down the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach for two months, the economic loss could reach $60 billion. The ports make up the third busiest port in the world, but its docks and terminals are only about nine feet above the water. A separate report issued March concluded a Southern California tsunami could cost at least $42 billion.

A massive wave higher than that could cause extensive damage, the report said. Thousands of pleasure boats and other crafts could come loose, and vehicles, equipment, containers and tools could get washed away.

Nasa has estimated that an impact from Apophis, which has an outside chance of hitting the Earth in 2036, would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square kilometres would be directly affected by the blast but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere.

And, scientists insist, there is actually very little time left to decide. At a recent meeting of experts in near-Earth objects (NEOs) in London, scientists said it could take decades to design, test and build the required technology to deflect the asteroid. Monica Grady, an expert in meteorites at the Open University, said: "It's a question of when, not if, a near Earth object collides with Earth. Many of the smaller objects break up when they reach the Earth's atmosphere and have no impact. However, a NEO larger than 1km [wide] will collide with Earth every few hundred thousand years and a NEO larger than 6km, which could cause mass extinction, will collide with Earth every hundred million years. We are overdue for a big one."

Apophis had been intermittently tracked since its discovery in June last year but, in December, it started causing serious concern. Projecting the orbit of the asteroid into the future, astronomers had calculated that the odds of it hitting the Earth in 2029 were alarming. As more observations came in, the odds got higher.

Apophis (Egyptian Apep) was the great adversary of the sun god, Re. and was the very embodiment of the powers of dissolution, darkness and non-being. Hence, he was a sort of void or "black hole" forcing those he swallowed into that non-existence which the Egyptians feared so greatly.

The Ozone Monitoring Instrument (Omi) and other key equipment on Aura can build a daily picture of air quality.

The pollution maps, which can see detail at the city scale, will be used to identify problem hotspots.

"This is the first time that we have been able to follow pollution globally from day to day," said Pieternel Levelt, of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, who is Omi's principal investigator.

"This will help us understand how pollution is formed and where it comes from, its sources; and where it goes to, its sinks.

Aura (Latin for breeze) was launched July 15, 2004. The design life is five years with an operational goal of six years. Aura flies in formation about 15 minutes behind Aqua. Aura is part of the Earth Observing System (EOS), a program dedicated to monitoring the complex interactions that affect the globe using NASA satellites and data systems.

If a large eruption was about to occur "we would see large scale deformation at the summit ... the (lake) water level rising ... ground cracking, high temperatures ... and we've not seen anything like that at all," he said.

The most likely scenario was that the volcano would continue "like it is for some days or weeks," he added.

Scott, from New Zealand's Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, added the eruption at its current intensity was unlikely to cause a lahar -- a devastating river of mud -- by forcing up the level of the crater's Lake Vui, whose waters in recent days have been churned up from a picturesque aqua blue color to a muddy gray-brown.

Displaced villagers sat in the shade of trees looking up at the 3,000 meter (10,000-foot) plume as they waited to hear if they will be allowed home or forced to evacuate the island.

Like all islands in the Pacific Rim of Fire, the archipelago lies between two side of a fault in the earth's crust which rub against each other and cause volcanic eruptions and earthquakes that can, on some occassions, be particulary impressive. The Vanuatu archipelago has countless craters of extinct and active volcanoes.

Researchers can now decipher the intricate history of ice movements in the just-released "Mosaic of Antarctica," which uses images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer onboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. The map is the result of a partnership between NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Boulder; and the University of New Hampshire, Durham. BR>
A second map to be released early next year will provide the most complete and accurate topographical survey of the continent ever undertaken, with more than 65 million points surveyed from space by the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System orbiting on NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat). This "digital elevation model" produced at Goddard will be distributed by NSIDC in a format compatible with the Mosaic map. BR>
"The Antarctic Mosaic shows a lot of very subtle changes in the slope of the terrain that you cannot see from the ground," says Robert Bindschadler, chief scientist of Goddard's Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory. "These subtle variations are important because they tell us the direction the ice is flowing now and they indicate where it has gone in the past. The surface roughness also tells us about the bed underneath the ice and whether the ice is sliding over the bed or frozen to it."

The map will very likely reveal unseen features and new opportunities for exploration, Bindschadler said. "Antarctica is a big place, and there is still an awful lot of the ice sheet that hasn't been explored." The new map will be used by researchers to identify interesting areas and plan expeditions to investigate them.

THE END IS IN SIGHT. IT REALLY REALLY IS. BUT IN THE MEANTIME... EPSILON CONTINUES TO MAINTAIN HURRICANE STATUS. HI-RES DATA FROM THE 2037Z QUIKSCAT PASS SHOWED SOME VERY REASONABLE-LOOKING 60 KT VECTORS IN MUCH OF THE EYEWALL...AND ALLOWING FOR THE HORIZONTAL RESOLUTION OF THE INSTRUMENT...IT IS LIKELY THAT THERE ARE STILL SOME 65 KT WINDS PRESENT IN THE CIRCULATION. DVORAK INTENSITY ESTIMATES FROM TAFB AND SAB ARE ALSO STILL 65 KT. WATER VAPOR IMAGERY...HOWEVER...SHOWS NORTHWESTERLY FLOW BEGINNING TO IMPINGE ON AND DISRUPT THE OUTFLOW TO THE NORTH OF THE CYCLONE.

Epsilon refuses to obey the rules. Not only has Epsilon refused to die as expected -- it has strengthened in the past day to near Category 2 strength. Epsilon is traversing 22-23C waters, which are a full four degrees C (7 F) below what is normally thought of as the minimum needed to allow a hurricane to strengthen. The upper level winds are unfavorable -- Epsilon was been under 20 knots of shear the past two days. It is unusual to see a hurricane intensify in the face of 20 knots of shear (although Wilma managed to do so). It is unheard of for a hurricane to intensify in the face of 20 knots of shear, and with 22C water temperatures under it. Like I've been saying about this entire Hurricane Season of 2005, the normal rules do not apply. Epsilon is another storm that we do not understand, and I hope someone out there in grad school is taking data on this storm and writing a Ph.D. thesis on it!

The WWF says there is an urgent need to conserve forests in south-east Asia which are under pressure from logging and the palm oil trade.

The creature, believed to be carnivorous, was spotted in the Kayan Mentarang National Park, which lies in Indonesian territory on Borneo.

The team which discovered it, led by biologist Stephan Wulffraat, is publishing full details in a new book on Borneo and its wildlife.

"You don't find new mammals that often, and to do so must be extraordinary," said Callum Rankine, head of the species programme at WWF-UK.

Harry Bryden at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK, whose group carried out the analysis, says he is not yet sure if the change is temporary or signals a long-term trend. "We don't want to say the circulation will shut down," he told New Scientist. "But we are nervous about our findings. They have come as quite a surprise."

The North Atlantic is dominated by the Gulf Stream - currents that bring warm water north from the tropics. At around 40° north - the latitude of Portugal and New York – the current divides. Some water heads southwards in a surface current known as the subtropical gyre, while the rest continues north, leading to warming winds that raise European temperatures by 5°C to 10°C.

But when Bryden's team measured north-south heat flow last year, using a set of instruments strung across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to the Bahamas, they found that the division of the waters appeared to have changed since previous surveys in 1957, 1981 and 1992. From the amount of water in the subtropical gyre and the flow southwards at depth, they calculate that the quantity of warm water flowing north had fallen by around 30%.

A report by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme in Sweden -- launched by Nobel prize-winner Professor Paul Crutzen and other top scientists -- warned last week that pollution threatened to "trigger changes with catastrophic consequences" like these.

Scientists have long expected that global warming could, paradoxically, cause a devastating cooling in Europe by disrupting the Gulf Stream, which brings as much heat to Britain in winter as the sun does: the US National Academy of Sciences has even described such abrupt, dramatic changes as "likely". But until now it has been thought that this would be at least a century away.

The new research, by scientists at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Acquaculture Science at Lowestoft and Canada's Bedford Institute of Oceanography, as well as Woods Hole, indicates that this may already be beginning to happen.

N'kisi is believed to be one of the most advanced users of human language in the animal world.

About 100 words are needed for half of all reading in English, so if N'kisi could read he would be able to cope with a wide range of material.

He uses words in context, with past, present and future tenses, and is often inventive.

One N'kisi-ism was "flied" for "flew", and another "pretty smell medicine" to describe the aromatherapy oils used by his owner, an artist based in New York.