German scientists took an expedition to a remote region of the Brazilian Amazon on the border with French Guiana to see if they could set up a Nazi outpost in the Amazon.

The book, The Guyana Project: A German Adventure on the Amazon, says the Nazis believed they were destined to colonise and settle in parts of the world much like the pioneers of America's west.

On an island on a tributary of the Jari River, author Jens Gluessing found a 9ft-high wooden cross etched with swastikas.

The inscription says: "Joseph Greiner died here on 2.1.1936, a death from fever in the service of German Research Work."

Mr Gluessing discovered photographs of the expedition by exploring German and Brazilian archives.

He found that Greiner was one of three sent by the SS to explore the region bordering French Guyana with a view to populating it on behalf of the Reich.

Applicants are being invited for the illustrious position, once held by Sir Isaac Newton, which will be vacated on October 1, 2009.

But Prof Hawking will continue his work as usual at Cambridge University as Emeritus Lucasian Professor at the university, an honorary title.

A spokeswoman explained it was University policy for professors to "pass the baton" in the year they reach the age of 67.

She said Prof Hawking's diary is already booked up to 2012.

"The post is retiring but Hawking isn't," the spokeswoman said. "Nothing will change. It is merely a formality."

Prof Hawking, 66, will have held the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics for 30 years at the time of his retirement.

At the height of last year's confounding blizzard of cat photos, in which the Internet was blanketed in photos of cats talking like little hackers, a simple cartoon put things in perspective. It was of two men of two men - stick figures, in fact - surrounded by cats with strange little placards on them...

It might have been more wry than uproarious, but it crystallized the absurdity of the moment. Last year, the imperative on the Internet was that cats needed captioning. Don't ask why; it's just what the Web was buzzing about. Maybe we could have ignored the silliness if the Internet was discrete from the real world, but it isn't. In fact, the lines between the two are blurring more and more each day.

And for this, we can thank - or blame - one Randall Munroe, a 24-year old former National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineer, and his creation, the comic strip xkcd.

For many fans, players and coaches across the country, hockey isn't just a game. It's a religion. The game-day rituals, intense camaraderie of fans and cultural presence of the sport have elevated it to sacred status.

Now, the University of Montreal is taking that holy association to another level with the launch of a new course specifically devoted to examining the link between hockey and religion.

Like religion, hockey binds people together and can "affirm that we are Canadian and we can be proud to be Canadian," said Olivier Bauer, a theology professor at the University of Montreal who will teach the course, beginning in January.

While the parallels between sport and religion have been well-documented in other countries, Prof. Bauer said, there has been a void when it comes to looking at the significance of hockey within Canada.

Scientists have developed a way to erase specific memories in mice while leaving others intact and not damaging the brain.

By manipulating levels of an important protein in the brain, certain memories can be selectively deleted, researchers led by neurobiologist Joe Tsien of the Medical College of Georgia reported in the journal Neuron.

While some experts have suggested there could be value in erasing certain memories in people such as wartime traumas, Tsien doubted this could be done as it was in mice. Tsien also questioned the wisdom of wiping out a person's memories.

"All memories, including the painful emotional memories, have their purposes. We learn great lessons from those memories or experiences so we can avoid making the same kinds of mistakes again, and help us to adapt down the road," Tsien said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

The ailing Hubble Space Telescope could be snapping pictures of the heavens again as early as Saturday after engineers fixed one of the problems that has largely shut down the instrument for the last three weeks...

Scientists took the first step Thursday, powering up an instrument that packages and delivers data from the telescope, orbiting 350 miles above Earth, to the ground.

Last week when they did that, two glitches occurred that caused NASA to suspend the recovery operation.

One was a software problem that led to an automatic shutdown. The other was an electrical short in the power tray. Goddard engineers have since reconfigured the software.