The world's oldest tree root system - almost twice as old as the current record-holder listed in the Guinness Book of World Records - has been discovered by a group of Swedish researchers in a province in northern Sweden. Hit the full article for all the details.

These days, you can get cancer from just about everything: Junk food, "health food," sunlight, and mobile phones. Don't look now, but Wi-Fi may be raising your chances of getting the dreaded disease as well.

Concerned members of the scientific community, education professionals, and parents have been pushing for a real study that focuses on the possible health consequences of the system. The latest and biggest member of the plight is no less than Sir William Stewart, who is most famous for his work regarding the probe on mobile phone radiation and what threats it poses to human health.

Wi-Fi, or wireless network connections, make use of signals emitted by wireless adapters and routers to send data and facilitate internet access without the use of cables. However, critics of the system point out that the level of radiation within the Wi-Fi field may be in excess of tolerance and may cause cancer or brain damage.

Strange illnesses have been documented in science journals involving people who work long hours in Wi-Fi perimeters. An incident of a teacher who fell ill in the Stowe School prompted the school administration to do away with their wireless network. Many other campuses in Europe have either suspended or partially decommissioned their wireless networks.

"Do we not know enough already to say, 'Stop!'?" says Professor Olle Johansson of Sweden's Karolinska Institute as he described the adverse health effects of Wi-Fi. The professor also pointed out that although there's a significant number of articles published in science journals regarding the matter, there's not a single full-scale study on it.

The Professional Association of Teachers will write next week to the office of the Secretary of State for Education to ask for a real study which will once and for all determine whether or not the system is safe to have in homes and classrooms. Action appropriate to the findings are expected to be taken by the government.

The U.S. just dropped down to the seventh position in the Networked Readiness Index Rankings for 2006. The Rankings were included in a report submitted by the World Economic Forum, which attributed the sinking to the "deterioration of political and regulatory environment" - whatever that means.

The report took into consideration the technological advancements in general business, the infrastructure available for production or use, and the initiative and gravity of the national government's policies on economic development and improving local and global competitiveness. With that said, the top 10 countries in the Index Rankings of 2006 are:

1. Denmark (3)
2. Sweden (8)
3. Singapore (2)
4. Finland (5)
5. Switzerland (9)
6. Netherlands (12)
7. US (1)
8. Iceland (4)
9. UK (10)
10. Norway (13)

With strong emphasis with cooperative development and college education, the U.S. is the leader in innovation. But also noticeable is Singapore's strongest points of innovation and network readiness.

Denmark now leads the world in technological innovation and application, because of constant support given from the government for the thriving e-businesses, strict regulatory policies and a quick and early liberalization of the telecommunication sector.

We all heaved a sigh of relief when scientists announced three years ago that the depletion of the ozone layer may be slowing down due to the international ban on chlorofluorocarbons. And it was only several weeks back that we reported on the healing of the Ozone layer. But now, it seems that the celebration was a little bit too soon.

According to the European Space Agency (ESA), so far this year, the protective layer hovering 15 miles above Earth, shielding us against harmful ultraviolet rays, has lost approximately 44 million tons. This number topped the previous record of 43 million tons of ozone loss back in 2002. Says ESA Atmospheric Engineer Claus Zehner, "The extreme loss of ozone can be explained by the temperatures above Antarctica reaching the lowest record in the area since 1979."

The depletion of the ozone layer is caused mainly by free radical catalysts. Because of the imminent danger the depletion may cause to man's health, countries started to slowly exert efforts at minimizing the damage, with Sweden being the first nation to ban CFC-containing aerosol sprays in 1978. By 1985, the Antarctic Ozone hole was discovered, and as such, negotiations at the Montreal Protocol sharply limited CFC production in 1987 and phased out completely by 1996.

The ozone level has been reported to lower by about 3% every year on a global scale during the past decade, thereby increasing the risk of skin cancer, cataracts and harm to marine life.

The ozone loss for this year was determined via the Envisat satellite of ESA.

It's the earliest ancestor of everything with a backbone that ever walked on land.

What appeared to be nothing more than the remains of a common lungfish turned out to be a marvellously preserved example of a creature that walked up onto the land about 400 million years ago, which paleontologist Ted Daeschler describes as a "intermediate" between fish and amphibians. The remains of "Tiktaalik" (an Inuit name for a large, shallow-water fish) are so well preserved that every skeletal detail is clearly visible.

The line between fish and land animals has been fairly well documented in the fossil record. There have been remains found of bony, lobe-finned fishes with air-breathing organs, such as the vaguely crocodile-like Pandericthys, as well as Acanthostega, which had actual  limbs and digits in addition to gills.

However, an actual "link" between bony fishes and amphibians such as salamanders and frogs has eluded paleontologists - until now. "We take a pretty big jump from Panderichthys to Acanthostega," says Daeschler. It is understood that fins eventually became legs, as the rigid head separated from the rest of the body to end wind up at the end of a flexible neck. What was not known before now how and when these traits changed. Tiktaalik seems to represent this intermediate form.

"We describe this as a 'fishopod' - part fish, part tetrapod," says Neil Shubin.

Per Ahlberg, a palaeontologist at Uppsala University in Sweden adds, "Tiktaalik is significantly closer to the midpoint of the transition than Panderichthys...[it] is clearly a fish. With Tiktaalik, you're not entirely certain what to call the thing."

If Tiktaalik is any indication, early tetropods (literally, "four-footed") spend more time in the water than on land. Tiktaalik still had well-developed gills, and thrashing around was probably as well as it could move over land. Even a mostly aquatic "fishopod" would have had good reason to come ashore, however.  Tiktaalik lived at the time that the first significant land-based ecosystems were establishing themselves. Ancestors of today's bushes and trees were becoming established, as grasses and flowers were springing up everywhere. Essentially, the planet's biomass was becoming more of what we see today.

"If you're standing at the margins, you're seeing a small stream choked with vegetation," says Shubin. "The stream is teeming with life. There were large fish, 10 to 12 feet long, that for all intents were functioning like crocodiles. What you have is a really fish-eat-fish sort of world. What's on land? No predators yet - at least none with backbones. There are advantages to being able to exploit the shallows and mudflats: to avoid predators and gain access to a competition-free world."