The crashing of the enormous fluked tail on the surface of the ocean is a “calling card” of modern whales.

Living whales have no back legs and use their front legs as 'flippers' that allow them to steer. Their tails provide the powerful thrust necessary to move their huge bulk.

Yet this has not always been the case, according to research in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Paleontologist Mark D. Uhen of the Alabama Museum of Natural History describes new fossils from Alabama and Mississippi that pinpoint where tail flukes developed in the evolution of whales.

Fort Miami wasn't a fort at all, according to discoveries made this summer by members of the University of Cincinnati's Ohio Valley Archaeology Field School project, who spent weeks working at the site in Hamilton County's Shawnee Lookout park.

What they found actually offers great insight into the cultural priorities of the Shawnee – the human labor that went into building the earthworks were done for agricultural purposes, not military. The earthworks were not a fort, but a water management system of dams and canals built to counter the impact of long-term drought.

It is also much larger than previously believed – so large, in fact, that its berms stretch to almost six kilometers in length, making it twice as large as any other Native American earthworks in Ohio, and one of the largest in the nation.

Endeavour International Corporation today announced a discovery at the site of its Noatun C prospect located in PL107 in the Norwegian North Sea. The well encountered a gas condensate column in the targeted Middle to Lower Jurassic sandstone. The drilling of a sidetrack will begin immediately to locate the gas water contact and further determine the size of the discovery.

The Noatun C was drilled to a total depth of 5,110 meters (16,765 feet) below sea level in approximately 293 meters (958 feet) of water. Logging and formation tests confirm the presence of gas condensate. The prospect is one of several satellites to be drilled by Endeavour and the operator StatoilHydro as potential tie backs to the Njord field that lies 16 kilometers south of the discovery. Two well bores, a discovery well and an appraisal well, drilled during the second quarter of 2008 at the Galtvort prospect in PL348 also encountered gas condensate. These successes followed a gas condensate discovery in late 2007 at the Njord Northwest Flank prospect west of the Njord field in PL107. Endeavour holds a 2.5 percent equity interest in the Noatun, Galtvort, and the Njord Northwest Flank discoveries and the Njord field.

Brage Satellites

All 3,000 Virgin Trains staff (that get seen by customers) will be sporting a new look today following the delivery of new uniforms.

The difference? All of the Wensum-supplied garments are 'eco-friendly.'

What does that mean? Leave it to Richard Branson to make clothes that can be thrown in a washing machine an ecological PR move. Both the garments and the package are also recycleable, they say, and the manufacturer treats its workforce within full Human Rights conditions, though that would seem to be a bonus outside the environment.

A team of scientists from the University of Sunderland have developed a hydrogen-powered car that they believe is a significant step forward in creating a mass-produced 'green' machine.

The team, led by Dirk Kok from the Institute of Automotive and Manufacturing Advanced Practice (AMAP), in partnership with the Centre for Process Innovation at Wilton and Lambda One Autogas at Gateshead, have successfully adapted a Nissan Almera to run on hydrogen so that it only emits water from its exhaust.

The HyPower Nissan Almera will be unveiled at the Partners4Automotive 2008 conference September 17th at the University of Sunderland’s Sir Tom Cowie Campus. This international event will look at alternative fuel technologies for vehicles and transport systems, giving local business the chance to see cutting edge developments from around the world.

Rheumatoid arthritis is often a more painful experience for women than it is for men, though the visible symptoms are the same, and doctors should take more account of these subjective differences when assessing the need for medication, according to findings presented at a congress on gender medicine arranged by Karolinska Institutet.

For reasons yet unknown, rheumatoid arthritis is roughly three times more common amongst women than men. Moreover, several studies also suggest that rheumatoid arthritis eventually impairs the life quality of female suffers more than it does that of male sufferers. Here, too, the underlying reasons are unclear, but scientists have speculated that the medicines used affect women and men differently.