Sharpening tools is no easy task.  If you've ever tried to do it yourself you know that prehistoric man had to have developed real skill to sharpen stone tools - using pressure flaking, no less.

Pressure flaking is a technique where implements shaped by hard stone hammers strikes and then softer wood or bone strikes are carefully trimmed by directly pressing the point of a tool made of bone on the edges of the tool.   A new study says pressure flaking was being used at Blombos Cave in South Africa during the Middle Stone Age by anatomically modern humans and involved the heating of silcrete (quartz grains cemented by silica) used to make tools. 

Unless you live in a remote mountain cabin, you might never be without an Internet connection in the world of the future.   Members of the public could form the backbone of powerful new mobile networks, by wearing sensors being researched at Queen's University Belfast. 

According to researchers, the sensors could create new ultra high bandwidth mobile internet infrastructures and reduce the density of mobile phone base stations.    The engineers from Queen's Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT), are working on a new project based on the new science of "body-centric" communications. 

As a result of a global health campaign, polioviruses have almost been eradicated in many areas of the world but enterovirus 71 is closely related to poliovirus and was first detected in California in the 1960s. Since then the virus has spread across Asia, affecting mostly children and some adults. Serious cases of the disease can include neurological disorders such as meningitis, paralysis and encephalitis.