Last week, just as the Movember moustaches began to take root (really, you haven’t shaved all month? Ok…I like your shadow moustache), a story came out in the news connecting the contraceptive pill to the rise in Western countries prostate cancer cases.

Newspapers and blogs reported that careless women had been taking their contraceptive pill and then peeing. Peeing everywhere. Contributing to a rise in the water’s oestrogen levels, water men drink. This in turn meant more men seemed to be developing prostate cancer. Well, you could you sci-fi it? 

Finally leaving the list of unsung women is spy catcher Mabel Elliott, previously only cited as an unknown heroine. Mabel Elliott’s name and achievements have recently been uncovered in the Royal Society of Chemistry archives.

In 1915 Elliott found messages were being sent undercover by a German agent. Elliott gave evidence under the name Maud Phillips protect her identity. The need for a different name when dealing with such espionage contributed to Mabel Elliott’s continued anonymity and lack of recognition until the archive finding.

Fluent in German and Dutch, Elliott worked for the War Ministry in London as a censor of letters. It was Elliott who intercepted the letter sent to Holland that revealed a spy network. The letters detailed British shipping and troop movements and were written by the German spy, Anton Kuepferle. Kuepferle had based himself in Liverpool under the pretence he was an American citizen.

So I am assuming we’ve all read Liz Jones’ article today in the Daily Mail, 'The craving for a baby that drives women to the ultimate deception', time has passed and you’re now able to close your mouths. Having toyed with the idea of a spoof article by Jiz Loans I realised that A) some things are too ridiculous to parody. And B) far better to try and use it for good, not as a warning to men that all women post 35 are baby crazy but that they will soon be able to take more responsibility regarding contraception.

Last month’s Future Contraception Initiative conference has revealed we are on the brink of the male contraceptive and it is no longer just a hypothetical pill dismissed by women who insist men would forget to take it. 

I once earned 15 house points at my Studley primary school for describing (I am guessing it was an exercise in adjectives) a yeti. I had been reading about them in the Usbourne book of Mysteries & Marvels of Nature (page 92, it's very well thumbed) and was rapt. My hopes of crossing paths with a yeti in the wilds of the west midlands were distant but it now seems should I fly to Russia I definitely maybe might be in with a chance. And just in time for Kate Bush's new Yeti themed single! 

A new method involving bacteria has been created by science to work as a living invisible ink. Sadly too late for Enid Blyton to incorporate a crude homemade version into one of her many Famous Five, Secret Seven or Five Find-Outers books as she did with ordinary invisible ink (it involves an orange and an iron).

Researchers at Tufts University, US, have decided an orange and an iron isn’t good enough for them to use for secret communication. Instead seven different strains of E. Coli were genetically engineered to produce protein. The protein colonies, when placed under the correct wavelength of light, glow fluorescently.

By printing the different colonies of protein into a grid this method could be used to convey messages which are called SPAM, (Steganography by Printed Arrays of Microbes). As well as secret communications, the microbes could also be used for anti-counterfeiting.

Enid also taught me how, should this ever happen to me, to escape from a locked room. Provided I had paper, the room had floor boards, a gap under the door and the key was left in the lock. Thanks Enid.

Kate

That cappuccino, that café au lait, that miniature steaming caldera (I am under the impression we aren’t really to say ‘coffee’ any more) you drink every morning could stave off depression. Studies recently published in the Archives of Internal Medicine have found that women who drink coffee regularly are less likely to develop depression. The study took place from 1996 to 2006 and involved over 50, 000 US female nurses who recorded their coffee consumption over this time.

2600 of these women developed depression, the majority of which drank either no or little coffee. Those who drank 2 to 3 cups a day reduced their risk of depression by 15% and those who drank an inhuman amount reduced their risk by 20%

Regular coffee drinkers were also more likely to drink alcohol, smoke and be wicked cool.

Although scientists say it is too soon to start encouraging women to drink more coffee, you’ll take my mug of black coffee from my cold dead jittery hands.

Kate

I am in love with a new website: nerdaydaytrips.com.

I’m one of those people who follow the brown signs off motorways because they sound vaguely interesting. I will happily go to any museum, the more obscure and special interest the better. I’m interested in other people’s passions and interests, and I love nosing around out of the way places and learning odd facts I can recite at a later date. So this is pretty much my perfect site.

The site was conceived by Ben Goldacre (of Bad Science), and Jo Brodie, and anyone can submit ideas for day trips, anywhere in the world.

The site has only been live for 4 days, and it already has hundreds (possibly thousands) of ideas mapped out. I spent a good hour or so earlier happily investigating new places to visit, and adding a few of my own. If you want to do something different, take a look – I'll be checking it every time I go away.

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