Today's news

Blunkett backs student volunteerism
David Blunkett, the home secretary and former education secretary, has backed the idea of employing students to do voluntary work in schools, with hours spent in the classroom being balanced against student loans. (The Times)

Asteroid hunter claims new moon
Bill Yeung, a Canadian amateur asteroid hunter, claims to have discovered Earth’s second moon, an object no more than 50m across. (The Guardian)

From the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science
HIV could be Trojan horse for life-saving genes
HIV, the virus responsible for Aids, may soon be used to save lives. Its unique method of infiltrating itself into human cells could be used in gene-therapy treatments for Parkinson’s disease, haemophilia and heart transplants, Andrew Lever of the University of Cambridge told the BA Festival of Science. (The Daily Mail, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times)

Magic bullets may be too costly to produce
A new generation of drugs tailor-made for individuals that could revolutionise the treatment of some of the most lethal cancers might never be made widely available because pharmaceuticals firms find them too expensive to develop, Keith Snell of the Institute of Cancer Research said. (The Financial Times, The Independent, The Times)

Mill reveals its sea-battle scars
The secrets of a 19th-century American frigate captured by the Royal Navy have been revealed by the timbers of a Hampshire water mill. (The Times)

Play it loud, pops
Toddlers do not mind whether music is classical or pop, they just like it loud and fast, according to Alexandra Lamont of Keele University, who carried out a study of the young musical ear.  (The Independent)

Old oil fields join global warming fight
Spent oil and gas fields could be used safely as underground storage depots for industrial carbon-dioxide waste as an interim measure in the fight against global warming, Andrew Chadwick of the British Geological Survey told the festival. (The Daily Mail, The Times)

 

England trails Europe in woodland areas
England and Northern Ireland have the smallest percentage of woodland in Europe, according to a survey by an environmental pressure group. (The Independent)

Smoking linked to cot death
Nicotine in tobacco damages receptors in the brain that keep sleeping babies breathing. The finding, by French and Swedish researchers published by the American Academy of Sciences, links smoking in pregnancy directly to cot death. (The Daily Mail)  

Lady Chatterley too hot for pornographers
Several passages in D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover were deemed too racy even for a pirate pornographic edition published in the US. (The Guardian)

Government hails latchkey kids plan
The government has hailed a purpose-built school that is opening its doors between 7am and 10pm to allow latchkey children to use its facilities as a national model to tackle underachievement in secondary schools. (The Guardian, The Independent)