Vodafone’s home broadband service opens to all

After a three-year hiatus, Vodafone returned to the home broadband game this summer, starting out with a limited service available in just a few counties. A few months later, it expanded the launch to everywhere its underground infrastructure (licenced and owned) covered, but only offered the “Connect” broadband service to existing Vodafone mobile customers. Today, the company announced it’s now available to everyone, not just those it has on its books already. Assuming Vodafone Connect is available in your area, you can get up to 17 Mbps ADSL for a tenner a month, up to 38 Mbps fibre for twice that, or up to 76 Mbps fibre for £25 per month.

That’s a fiver more each month than existing mobile customers have to pay for the same 18-month contracts, but everyone is on the hook for the £17 per month home phone line rental (you can get a 20 percent discount for paying a year’s worth upfront). Brand new customers are entitled to a little deal sweetener should they decide to move to Vodafone, though, in the form of a free year’s subscription to Netflix.

[Image credit: Janitors/Flickr]

Source: Vodafone

Sky to offer ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ first after UK cinemas

Sky knows that more and more UK families are shying away from building costly DVD and Blu-ray collections and embracing on-demand services like Sky Movies and Now TV. To be the best, you need the best streaming catalog though, so today the company has confirmed that it’s extending its deal with Disney. The new multi-year agreement means that Disney films will continue to premiere on Sky Movies and Now TV’s Sky Movies Pass in the “first pay TV window” — before other streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, in other words. That’s especially important given that there’s a new Star Wars film coming out later this year. So once you’re done soaking up the lightsaber mayhem in cinemas, Sky will be one of the first places to let you watch it again at home. We suspect most fans will make an exception here and buy a physical copy of The Force Awakens, but if you’re a casual Star Wars follower — it’s good to know that Sky’s got you covered.

.@SkyMovies customers will enjoy exclusive @DisneyStudios premieres such as Inside Out, Star Wars: Force Awakens after signing new agreement

— Sky Corporate (@SkyCorporate) October 12, 2015

[Image Credit: Disney, Star Wars]

Source: Sky

New data suggests Mars had lakes that could have supported life

If you asked most star-gazers about water on Mars a month ago, you’d likely be told there is evidence for liquid H2O in the past, but it’s probably long gone. How things can change. First was the big announcement that liquid water is still present (in some form). Now, new data from the Curiosity rover suggests there could have been a lot more of it than first thought, for longer periods of time, with the conditions needed to support life.

Curiosity has been investigating sedimentary rock around an area known as the Gale crater. The depth of the crater, and the fine-grained sandstone at the bottom hint at a large, lake-like body of water that remained over an extended period of time. This, in turn, adds fuel to the theory Mars once had the right atmospheric pressure, and a climate that didn’t cause water to freeze. The question about water on Mars, of course, is really a preamble to the question about the red planet’s ability to support life.

Curiosity’s findings can’t confirm life on Mars, but they do suggest the essential ingredients for biological soup (water and microbe-friendly conditions) were there. Theories and evidence for ground water on Mars have long existed, but usually based on the idea of subsurface water bursting up in a one-time event, or slower seepage to the surface — or an ocean too saline for anything to live in it. This new data supports the idea of surface water far more conducive to the emergence of life. The team behind the findings claiming there’s a “tantalizing possibility that extraterrestrial life might exist or have been preserved, because the evidence of water is so plentiful.”

Via: Gizmodo

Source: Science

Researchers control fruit flies’ hearts with a laser

Scientists have directly controlled animals before, but these approaches tend to either require surgery or only work with critters at certain stages in their lives. Researchers might have a more powerful technique in store, however: they’ve managed to control fruit flies’ heartbeats through laser pulses. The approach relies on optogenetics, or modifying the genes of animals to produce materials that respond to light. In this case, the team tweaked flies’ heart cells to produce light-sensitive proteins. After that, it was just a matter of zapping the hearts to make them beat on command, whether the flies were larvae or full-grown insects.

Right now, this concept wouldn’t be very practical for humans. You aren’t about to see people with these kinds of genetic modifications, and human bodies are simply too thick for light to reach very far. It isn’t an impossible concept, though. Near-infrared light would work, and you could augment cells with the right proteins to achieve similar effects. Eventually, you could see optical pacemakers that sit outside your body and easily adapt to your needs over time.

Via: IEEE Spectrum

Source: Science Advances