Newsbits

Contact at home

The SETI program at radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, is producing a huge amountof data that scientists don't have the resources to analyze. Internet surfers who have computer power to spare are being recruited to help analyze chunks of the data, reports New Scientist magazine. "Each volunteer will be supplied with an analysis program that automatically processes the data for a few hours or days, before returning it to the server. ... The Internet project is called SETI@home and is due to launch next spring".

Courtesy of Mike Kesterton (Globe and Mail)

Lock up your gnomes, Belgian police advise

Police have advised residents around the central Belgian town of Wavre to lock up their garden gnomes at night after several disappearances, Belga news agency reported Wednesday. Garden gnomes -- popular in Belgium -- had earlier been disappearing in the city of Namur to the south of Wavre and callers to police there claimed responsibility on behalf of a group called the "Gnome Liberation Front." Police have not drawn a link between the incidents in Namur and Wavre. Two gnomes disappeared from a home in the hamlet of Grez-Doiceau, near Wavre, Belga said, and were later found hanging from a tree with a note attached saying where they had been taken from.

Courtesy of Jurassic Gard, NEWSpot ECE 7/30/97