The Bauhaus-Dessau Foundation is going back to its roots and sponsoring an architectural competition that aims to encourage young architects to build attractive homes for the poor. Its 2008 award deliberately pays tribute to the Bauhaus commitment to social housing in the 1920s.

The Bauhaus in Dessau hopes to encourage architects to think about poverty. There's always something new in the world of architecture and interior design. Two of the themes at next week's International Furniture Show in Cologne will be "Priceless" and "Neo Nature," a reflection of the current popularity of costly eco-chic in German living rooms.

The truth is that just about everything goes these days, from retro to futurist, from cool to cushy -- although "cocooning" is apparently passé. The question of how we design and shape our living spaces is taken very seriously, because it reveals a lot about both a person's taste and their status.

Twins adopted by separate parents soon after birth later fell in love and married, unaware they were related, it emerged yesterday.

The couple, who have been granted anonymity, had their marriage annulled at a special High Court hearing, where judges ruled that the union had never been legally valid.

The case emerged during a debate in the House of Lords yesterday when the pro-life campaigner Lord Alton of Liverpool raised the couple's plight to highlight what he said were deficiencies in the Human Embryology and Tissues Bill, currently making its way through Parliament.

The couple, who were conceived normally, were adopted by different parents and separated soon after birth. They were never told they were twins and did not discover the truth until after their wedding.

Lord Alton, who learnt of the case from a High Court judge, is concerned the Bill, which makes it easier for lesbian and gay couples to have "test-tube" babies, weakens the rights of a child to know their father.

He said: "[The brother and sister] met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction, and the judge had to deal with the consequences of the marriage and all the issues of their separation.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2008) -- New research challenges the generally accepted belief that substantial ice sheets could not have existed on Earth during past super-warm climate events. The study by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego provides strong evidence that a glacial ice cap, about half the size of the modern day glacial ice sheet, existed 91 million years ago during a period of intense global warming. This study offers valuable insight into current day climate conditions and the environmental mechanisms for global sea level rise.

The new study examines geochemical and sea level data retrieved from marine microfossils deposited on the ocean floor 91 million years ago during the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum. This extreme warming event in Earth's history raised tropical ocean temperatures to 35-37°C (95-98.6°F), about 10°C (50°F) warmer than today, thus creating an intense greenhouse climate.

Using two independent isotopic techniques, researchers at Scripps Oceanography studied the microfossils to gather geochemical data on the growth and eventual melting of large Cretaceous ice sheets. The researchers compared stable isotopes of oxygen molecules (d18O) in bottom-dwelling and near-surface marine microfossils, known as foraminifera, to show that changes in ocean chemistry were consistent with the growth of an ice sheet. The second method in which an ocean surface temperature record was subtracted from the stable isotope record of surface ocean microfossils yielded the same conclusion.

[...]

These independent methods provided Andre Bornemann, lead author of the study, with strong evidence to conclude that an ice sheet about 50-60 percent the size of the modern Antarctic ice cap existed for about 200,000 years. Bornemann conducted this study as a postdoctoral researcher at Scripps Oceanography and continues this research at Universitat Leipzig in Germany.

"Until now it was generally accepted that there were no large glaciers on the poles prior to the development of the Antarctic ice sheet about 33 million years ago," said Richard Norris, professor of paleobiology at Scripps Oceanography and co-author of the study. "This study demonstrates that even the super-warm climates of the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum were not warm enough to prevent ice growth."