Elephants Sending Text Messages in Kenya!

Kenyan elephants have been texting local wildlife rangers warning them that they are heading towards the crops of neighboring villages! The elephants from the Ol Pejeta conservancy have been equipped with mobile phone SIM cards on their collars which automatically send text messages if they head towards local villages. The bull elephants, which are almost extinct, have previously raided villagers' crops during the harvest, sometimes wiping out six months of income at a time.
As a result, the Kenyan Wildlife Service has reluctantly had to shoot five animals that have been particularly persistent. But now a virtual fence has been set up using a global positioning system that mirrors the boundaries of the conservatory.
Kimani is one of the bull elephants with a SIM card. Whenever he approaches the virtual fence, his collar sends a text to rangers, who can head him off using spotlights to frighten him away. Kimani has been intercepted 15 times since the project began. Once almost a nightly raider, he last went near a farmer's field four months ago. The idea, drawn up by the Save the Elephants group, is now a huge relief to the small farmers who rely on their crops for food and cash for school fees.
31-year-old mother-of-two, Basila Mwasu, lives near the conservancy fence. Once an elephant stuck its trunk through a window into a room where her baby daughter was sleeping and the family had stored some corn. She was forced to beat it back with a burning stick. On another occasion, one of the elephants killed a neighbor who was defending his crop. "We had to go into town to tell the game (wardens) to chase the elephants away or we're going to kill them all." said Mwasu.
The founder of the Save the Elephants project, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, said the project is still in its infancy, and is not without problems. The collar batteries wear out every few years and with Ol Pejeta having five full-time staff and a standby vehicle to respond when a message flashes across a ranger's screen, the project has been very expensive. It is however a great success, as the villagers now feel safe.
"We can live together", said Mwasu.
"Elephants have the right to live, and we have the right to live too", she added.
Adam H. Bolton is an International News Researcher based in the UK

Invisible Clothing Fit For Harry Potter

What would you do if you could become invisible? Answers to that ever popular question range from the criminal (rob a bank) and obscene (spend a day in a women's locker room) to the political (super-efficient government spies) and bizarre (walk around naked in public). To many the question is rhetorical; it doesn't matter what they would do because it's never going to be possible. But for scientists hard at work on developing cloaking devices, the question is more pertinent.
In an article on cnn.com, Elizabeth Landau looks at two groups of scientists working on separate invisibility projects, both of which have achieved moderately promising results. Graeme Milton, a mathematician at the University of Utah, is working with a team of scientists based in Australia on invisibility models that use a superlens, a device that makes objects seem to disappear. Seeming to disappear is very different from actually becoming invisible, and so far the theory only applies to small objects, such as clusters of dust particles. This is a long way from invisibility as Harry Potter and his marvelous cloak know it.
So far Milton and his team have only been able to prove their theories mathematically, however, back in 2006 a Russian professor, Oleg Gadomsky, actually patented his method of optical camouflage. Gadomsky used his knowledge in quantum and optical electronics to arrange gold nanoparticles in a stratum that "cloaks the image of an object to the other side of the stratum". Wearing a parka-like garment, Gadomsky demonstrated his "invisibility cloak" to great success and can even be viewed on a video that has done the rounds on the internet.
On a completely different tack, SkinScan has used all available technology to develop fabric that mimics skin tone to create the illusion that the fabric is in fact not there. Jerold Kritchman & Co., the creators of Almost Invisible™ Clothing hold fast to their belief that the natural tones and colours of women's skin is inherently glamourous and go by the politically correct motto of "My colour is my sensuality".
SkinScan™ Technology records skin tone and reproduces it on a number of different fabrics, which can be used in the cut and design of a number of different products customised to individual needs. Kritchman hopes that clothing that looks invisible when worn will open up a whole new area for clothing fashion designers to explore.