What have computers learned from humans? To bicker, apparently. If you’ve ever read the comments on, say, any YouTube video and despaired at humanity, that might not be a surprise.

Two researchers from Cornell University gave cleverbot, (an online chatbot that interacts with, and learns from, humans in text form) 2 different voices and 2D avatars, and set the avatars up to talk to each other.
The conversation quickly descends into bizarre bickering about god, robots and unicorns.

UK company AWE and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory are combining forces with US National Ignition Facility (NIF) in an endeavour to develop clean energy from nuclear fusion. But that’s not the exciting bit, they do it with LASERS.

Instead of the usual fission plants, lasers will be used to compress atomic nuclei until they join, releasing energy.

"This is an absolutely classic example of the connections between really high-grade theoretical scientific research, business and commercial opportunities, and of course a fundamental human need: tackling pressures that we're all familiar with on our energy supply," said David Willetts, the UK's science minister.

This is not the first time scientists and industries have pursued the harvesting of energy from nuclear fusion. In the UK a previous project involved the use of magnetic fields but budget concerns halted the process. Now, however, fusion energy might be closer than we think. 

Kate

Do you live in a secluded country area with no street lighting? Can I come over tonight? Don’t worry it’s not for murdery reasons, it’s because tonight’s the night, in the UK, we can see a supernova.

A supernova is an exploding star. It’s also a model of caravan. In which I have stayed and I can confirm…pretty spacious. The explosion and death of this star will be visible from the UK after twilight, provided the sky is clear. It will be the first to be spotted from the UK in 40 years and is 21 light years away. For Doctor Who fans and those (me) fascinated by time travel that means what we witness tonight will actually be a death that happened 21 million years ago.

To spot the star tonight you need to find the plough (a constellation that, in my teen years, could be picked out on my forehead) at twilight, "draw an imaginary line through the second and third stars in the handle and follow that line up and left. The supernova is four degrees along, or around the distance taken up by five full moons in the sky," said Dr Mark Sullivan, an astrophysics research fellow at Oxford University in the Guardian. 

We may never see another star explosion like this in our lifetimes, so happy spotting and no pressure.

Kate

The lifetime ban on gay men giving blood is likely to be lifted.  Reports suggest it will be recommended only gay men who have been celibate for a decade be allowed to donate blood.  The ban on gay men donating blood was introduced in the 1980s in a bid to reduce risk of HIV contamination in donor blood.
 
The UK will be following Japan, South Africa and Australia who have begun to relax the rules regarding gay men giving blood.  In a recent survey at Brighton Gay Pride it was estimated 95% of gay men were willing to give blood.

You can find out where and when you can donate blood in England and North Wales here, http://www.blood.co.uk/  , Wales here http://www.welsh-blood.org.uk/giving-blood/and in Scotland here http://www.scotblood.co.uk/

Last night P J Harvey became the first artist to win the Mercury Music Award twice. Harvey beat competition from Adele, Katy B (no, me neither), Tinie Temper and Ghostpoet amongst others. A decade after winning the award for New York inspired Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, Let England Shake marks an unexpected symmetry for the Mercury awards.  Years in the making, Harvey’s 2011 album involved much research into wars and contains 3 songs about the Gallipoli campaign.

I’m not sure, but this could also be the first time the sentence ‘First woman to...’ has not been used for an award win.

Kate

One step forward, two steps back. In some kind of sick response the WHSmith’s gesture towards not restricting women’s interests to pink, glitter and dieting American women are seriously being presented with Chick Beer.

I thought this was a joke. You know, like diet Amstel beer (which is REAL! I saw it and was chastised for NOT drinking it in New York). But no, ladies, fear no more the humiliation of carrying a 6 pack of lagers BY THE PLASTIC RINGS. Chick Beer six packs come in handbag style packaging. Here it is, curly font and sanitary product colours on the bottle, which you aren’t expected to open with your teeth.

It’s not all watery lager though, 5% of Chick Beer profits will go to charities that ‘empower women’. Hopefully these charities will be specified later now that the word ‘empowering’ for women has become synonymous with nudity.

Kate

Poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy is taking a stand against txtspk naysayers. “It's [poetry] a perfecting of a feeling in language – it's a way of saying more with less, just as texting is” Duffy told the Guardian. On Wednesday the poet laureate will be launching a poetry anthology competition, Anthologise, for secondary school students. Duffy hopes the competition will ignite a passion for poetry in the Facebook generation.

Defending the medium of txtspk Duffy cites rap and, as usual when Young ppl and poetry is discussed, Alex Turner of The Arctic Monkeys. Turner mentioned the Montegues and Capulets ONE TIME in a song and suddenly he’s a poet. Romeo and Juliet is A) the most famous Shakespeare play and B) on the National Curriculum can we please pick another young musician as an example that poetry is alive and well?

The competition deadline is 1 March 2012. The judges include The National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clark; the Scottish Makar, Liz Lochhead and Morag Styles the Cambridge professor of children’s poetry.

Kate

Today, Monday 5th of September, marks the 30th anniversary of the women’s protest at Greenham Common. The Women’s Peace Camp was set up in protest against plans to install nuclear cruise missiles at the base in Berkshire.

Scores of women left their homes and families to ‘take the toys from the boys’, amongst them Fay Weldon and Bea Campbell.

The missiles were removed in March 1991, the last members of the camp left in 2000.

You can see more images of Greenham Common on the BBC Gallery

Kate

It seems both sisterhood and Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells still means something in this day and age. As of October this year women readers and writers need no longer be shuffled over to the Women’s Fiction section of WHSmith. All thanks to two women from Tonbridge, Claire Leigh and Julia Gillick who wrote to WHSmith’s chief executive Kate Swann despairing of the pink fluffiness of the Women’s Fiction section and lack of any classics. Their appeal to Swann’s sense of sisterhood worked and now teacher Gillick is encouraging her students to write to supermarkets regarding their choice of shelving labels.  

The publishing industry has yet to be queried about its need to put images of disembodied feet (though I suspect the answer to be ‘because all women like shoes’) on novels that fall comfortably into the uncomfortably successful genre of Chick Lit.

Kate