A Florida schoolgirl won top prize with a science project proving toilet water is cleaner than ice in fast food restaurants.

"My hypothesis was that the fast food restaurants' ice would contain more bacteria that the fast food restaurants' toilet water," she said.

Jasmine says at each restaurant she flushed the toilet once, then used sterile gloves to gather samples.

She also collected ice from soda fountains and asked for cups of ice at drive thru windows. She then tested the samples at a lab.

Jasmine said: "I found that 70% of the time, the ice from the fast food restaurant's contain more bacteria than the fast food restaurant's toilet water."

Heise Online is reporting about yet another example of the ever-warming relationship of copy protection and rootkit technologies. The affair started with the digital rights management system Sony BMG was using to protect audio CD's. Now, we can also confirm (thanks to Rüdiger from our German office!) that at least the German DVD release of the movie "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" contains a copy protection mechanism which uses rootkit-like cloaking technology.

The Settec Alpha-DISC copy protection system used on the DVD contains user-mode rootkit-like features to hide itself. The system will hide it's own process, but does not appear to hide any files or registry entries. This makes the feature a bit less dangerous, as anti-virus products will still be able to scan all files on the disk.

If you suspect you have this copy protection system installed on your computer and you wish to remove it, the manufacturer is providing an uninstaller.

A bright yellow slime mould that can grow to several metres in diameter has been put in charge of a scrabbling, six-legged robot.

The Physarum polycephalum slime, which naturally shies away from light, controls the robot's movement so that it too keeps out of light and seeks out dark places in which to hide itself.

Physarum polycephalum is a large single-celled organism that responds to food sources, such as bacteria and fungi, by moving towards and engulfing it. It also moves away from light and favours humid, moist places to inhabit. The mould uses a network of tiny tubes filled with cytoplasm to both sense its environment and decide how to respond to it. Zauner's team decided to harness this simple control mechanism to direct a small six-legged (hexapod) walking bot.

As the slime tried to get away from the light its movement was sensed by the circuit and used to control one of the robot's six legs. The robot then scrabbled away from bright lights as a mechanical embodiment of the mould. Eventually, this type of control could be incorporated into the bot itself rather than used remotely.

The US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has accidentally shot and injured a man during a quail hunting trip in Texas.

The victim, named as Harry Whittington, was on the trip with Mr Cheney at the Armstrong Ranch when the accident happened on Saturday.

Ms Armstrong said Mr Cheney had turned round to shoot at a bird but sprayed Mr Whittington with shotgun pellets instead.

A laywer from Austin, Texas, Mr Whittington was initially treated at the ranch by medical staff who normally travel with the vice-president.

Google last night revealed their plans to offer Gmail service for third party mail servers. Currently in beta, the service will allow mail server operators to essentially hand the reigns over to Google's Gmail cluster.

This is probably about as close to an ideal turn-key solution for e-mail as you can get. Colleges, small-to-medium sized businesses, non-profits, and others should see this as a stellar opportunity to essentially "outsource" their e-mail-and all that comes with it (downtime, spam management, etc.)-to Google. How many organizations can offer 2GB of e-mail space and a user interface as refined as Gmail? Not many. How many can do it for free? Practically none.

As with other recent Google ventures—such as adding remote logging service to Google Talk and adding Search Across Computers to Google Desktop Search—this announcement also suffers from a bit of the bad timing blues. This now makes the third new development to come out of Google in the wake of their battle with the US government over the infamous search data subpoena.

Google today announced a new "feature" of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new "Search Across Computers" feature will store copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google's own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user's computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who've obtained a user's Google password.

The privacy problem arises because the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, or ECPA, gives only limited privacy protection to emails and other files that are stored with online service providers—much less privacy than the legal protections for the same information when it's on your computer at home. And even that lower level of legal protection could disappear if Google uses your data for marketing purposes. Google says it is not yet scanning the files it copies from your hard drive in order to serve targeted advertising, but it hasn't ruled out the possibility, and Google's current privacy policy appears to allow it.

Interviewed for BBC website, Lavinia Carey, head of the British Video Association suggests that their research indiciates that people who download films illegally, pay to see as many films legally as a typical legit DVD consumer. Thus undermining the argument that illegal downloads impacts legitimate sales.

UK research shows that, on average, downloaders are film fans who view the same number of legitimate films (cinema, rented and bought DVDs) as the average active DVD consumer (24). On top of that, they also consume illegitimately acquired movies.

Researchers, including a BYU scientist, believe they have found a new compound that could finally kill the HIV/AIDS virus, not just slow it down as current treatments do.

While issuing a cautious caveat about his early results, Unutmaz acknowledged Monday that CSAs could be the breakthrough HIV/AIDS researchers have sought for so long.

In addition to being a potential checkmate to HIV, the compounds show indications of being just as effective against other diseases plaguing humankind - among them influenza, possibly even the dread bird flu, along with smallpox and herpes.

"We are encouraged ... that CSAs may provide a completely unique family of anti-infectives, potentially active against a wide range of viral, fungal and bacterial targets, including those resistant to current therapies," he said.

Users running Windows will be charged almost $50 each year for having their PCs protected by Microsoft against attacks from hackers.

Microsoft underlined the advantage in using Windows OneCare in a statement, saying: "Research showed that most people's computers are insufficiently protected from threats... because users find the protection process confusing and frustrating." Windows OneCare Live provides a "just take care of it for me" service.

News of the pricing comes a week after exiting Windows chief Jim Allchin told Computer Reseller News (CRN) the long-awaited Windows Vista client would not feature anti-virus protection, and customers would need to subscribe to Windows OneCare Live.

Microsoft's decision to charge customers extra for anti-virus protection comes despite repeated claims by the company about the level of importance accorded to security in Windows Vista. Allchin last month said: "Safety and security is the overriding feature that most people will want to have Windows Vista for."

Google has added a chat feature to Gmail. It brings Google Talk, minus voice calls, into your webmail client. Gmail now also logs your IMs, whether they originate in Gmail or Google Talk. In the commentary at InsideGoogle, I note that Google recommends you disable Firefox's AdBlock, which can block Google's ads, if you want Gmail Chat to function properly.