The summer of 2008 will go down as, "The Summer Aliens (Almost) Invaded the UK."

It started in May, when the British Government released previously secret UFO files to the National Archives. The files included corroborated reports from reputable sources of UFOs hovering over British cities.

In one amazing incident from 1984, air-traffic controllers describe a, "brilliant solid ball of light, bright silvery in colour," land on a runway in front of them, then takeoff in a near vertical climb. These stories appearing in both the national press and on TV caused quite a stir.

What happened next depends on your point of view. In one narrative, worried by their pubic exposure, the UFOs decided to step up their invasion plans, with the UK the center of the attack.

Another point of view has it that once UFOs became newsworthy, UFO stories multiplied. When people saw these reports, things they once dismissed as mundane they now perceived as UFOs. With more sightings publicized, people become more likely to report their own experiences, as they were no longer are worried about being labelled as "weird." It was a self-reinforcing process.

Whatever the reason, by mid-summer, UFO sightings had rocketed (excuse the pun). Malcolm Robinson, the founder member of Strange Phenomena Investigations, told the normally staid Daily Telegraph, "Something very bizarre is happening in the skies over the UK."

The national press ran stories on a "glowing" disc spotted above the M5 motorway, on fleets of objects hanging in the sky above an army barracks and of a police helicopter chasing a UFO.

In one famous story, a man calls the police to report a mysterious light hovering above his house, only to have the Police identify it as the moon when they arrived at the scene.

My hometown, Stevenage, has not been immune. A sighting in August was the first UFO sighting in the town in 32 years. The local Comet reported multiple-sightings of between two and seven orange spheres, travelling silently in a parallel course to the local airport's flight path. One group of 10 people at a barbecue took photos, which also appeared in the paper.

A week later, the paper provided the explanation. Someone had been letting off Chinese lanterns in the town. Chinese lanterns are baby hot air balloons about the size of a dustbin liner. The local airport was not amused. Pointing out that anyone releasing such objects needs to get clearance from the Civil Aviation Authority first.

Now September has arrived, the new soccer season has started and UFO reports have died down. With a new cold war looming and the UK facing its worse recession in 60 years, we may be looking back with fondness to the summer of 08. When all we had to worry about was ET stopping by for some barbecue chicken.

JHL-40

The Jess Heavy Lifter – 40 (JHL-40) will have a helium filled envelope sized so that the aircraft will be neutrally buoyant. This means that its four rotors lift only the payload. By comparison, the Russia’s Mil Mi-26, the world’s largest helicopter, can lift only half the payload with a similar power plant because it must lift its own weight as well.

"SkyHook secured the patent for this neutrally buoyant aircraft and approached Boeing with the opportunity to develop and build the system," said Pat Donnelly, director of Advanced Rotorcraft Systems for Boeing. "We conducted a feasibility study and decided this opportunity is a perfect fit for Advanced Systems' technical capabilities."

Designed by SkyHook founder Peter Jess, the JHL-40 will use rotor technology from the Chinook helicopter, avionics and flight controls technology from the 787 and Boeing’s experience as a lead systems integrator. "If you have to develop all of that technology from scratch on this aircraft we wouldn’t be sitting here today," Donnelly told Flight Global.

Image: Boeing / SkyHook

The US has a thriving, if dubious, export business in "contract cheating." This is the writing of student papers and course work for money. The UK is a major market for the US. However, this lucrative export trade is under threat from globalization.

UK colleges go to great lengths to detect and punish cheating, employing software to spot outright copying. However, as contract cheats often produce original work, such abuse difficult to detect.

Dr Thomas Lancaster and Robert Clarke at the UK’s Birmingham City University have been following the phenomenon since 2004. They told the Deccan Herald that over a 20-month period between 2004 and 2006, they recorded some 1,000 students cheating worldwide. The majority on IT-related courses, a third in the UK.

Students post requirements on legitimate marketplace websites used by freelance programmers and authors. Increasingly, sites set up specifically for contract cheating are used.

UK students tend to outsource to the lowest bidder. With prices ranging from £5 (US$10) for coursework, to £100 ($200) for a postgraduate dissertation, cheats in India and Romania are undercutting their US competitors. US authors, often hard-up students, are facing weeks without beer.

Should the US put protection of contract cheats on the next round of trade talks?

Image credit: krzakptak

In its annual "E-Communications Household Survey", the European Commission highlights trends in telecommunications within the European Union (EU). The report provides a snapshot of a continent in transition, but contains few surprises.

The report, (2.78 MB) released Jun. 27, show some marked differences between the old EU states and the newer members. With the newer states, leapfrogging landline technologies to mobile ones, a pattern often found in developing economies.

The survey of 27,000 households was carried out between Nov. 9 and Dec. 14, 2007.

Telephone Access

Ninety-five percent of European households have access to a telephone. In Luxembourg, Holland, Sweden and Cyprus, 100 percent of households now have at least one telephone. In Romania, only 80 percent have. The number of households in Poland with at least one telephone has increased by seven points in the last 12 months to 95 percent.

In the last year, the number of European households with a fixed telephone line has continued to fall. Overall, there has been a decline of two points to 70 percent. Rates have fallen particularly strongly in Portugal (-14 points), the Czech Republic (-10), Denmark (-9), Lithuania, Finland (both -8), Bulgaria and Spain (both -7).

At the same time, there has been a rapid increase in mobile phone access. Nearly a quarter of European households now only use a mobile phone. This rate is markedly higher in the new member states (39 percent) than in the 15 old member states (20 percent). In the Czech Republic 64 percent of households, use a mobile phone only at home.

Computers and the Internet

A majority of European households (53 percent) now have access to a computer. Nearly half (49 percent) have access to internet at home, an increase of seven points. Access via broadband has increased by eight points over the last year to 36 percent.

Of those with no access to the internet, half gave lack of interest as the reason.

The use of the internet to make phone calls is becoming popular within the EU. Twenty-two percent of Europeans who have an Internet connection at home say that someone in their household uses the internet to make phone calls, an increase of five points on previous year.

Mars

NASA's Viking missions first spotted this "crustal dichotomy" in the 1970s. Twenty years later the Mars Global Surveyor mission showed that the planet’s crust was up to 30 times thicker in the south than in the north. It also detected magnetic anomalies present only in the southern hemisphere.