A colour e-reader that supports video and potentially web browsing has been shown off by Dutch researchers.
The prototype uses screen technology - based on century-old science - that its makers say is up to four times more energy efficient than LCD screens.
Once established in the e-reader market, Dutch firm Liquavista hope to see its displays integrated into other devices in the future.
But analysts question whether consumers will be enticed by the greener gadgets.
Liquavista said it expects the first e-readers using the "electrowetting" technology to be available by the middle of 2011 and the technology to then become more widespread.
"You certainly could see this technology in your smartphone, in your mobile phone, in your web tablet, in your PC, in your notebook," said Guy Demuynck, head of the firm.
"But eventually you could see it in your home as your television screen in your living room," he added
Sunshine screen
Electrowetting has been known about for more than a century but is only now being perfected by several companies, for instance, to create auto-focus lenses for cameras.
It involves small electrical charges moving coloured oil within each pixel.
Most current e-readers use e-ink technology - small black and white beads that are manipulated with electrical charges.
Demo of how electrowetting works
Pages on current e-book readers can take up to two seconds to load each page. The new display can change images at a speed of up to 60 times per second, its manufacturers said.
This is fast enough to run video, which typically needs a refresh rate of 50 or 60 frames per second.
Liquavista uses the electrowetting to also add colour to a screen, but unlike liquid crystal displays (LCD) such as those on laptops, it can work without a backlight.
 The new display bounces natural light through oil filters back at the reader |
When used in sunlight, the new type of display can bounce the natural light through the oil filters back at the reader.
The brighter the sunshine, the more vivid the screen becomes; when used in a darker environment, the e-reader switches to the backlight automatically.
Johan Feenstra, Liquavista's founder, said the display combines the best of both technologies.
"On the one side there's the LCDs which bring video and colour, as we know from our TV screens. On the other side, there's the electrophoretic displays [e-ink e-readers] which bring low power consumption and readability in all lighting conditions," he said.
The company said the technology is three to four more efficient than LCD screens because of the higher level of backlight passing through each pixel.
James McQuivey, media technology analyst at tech research firm Forrester, agreed electrowetting has the potential to make the transition to devices and public displays such as billboards and bus stop posters.
But, he predicted some obstacles: "The challenge is physics really - it's to get things [oil] to respond quickly enough, and in sunshine - to get enough light to reflect back off the screen."
Green premium?
Despite the novelty of a colour e-readers that play video, the efficiencies of electrowetting may be the factor that holds the greatest potential for this technology.
Eventually, if placed into laptops these screens could deliver battery lives measured in days rather than hours.
"Electricity is not freely available everywhere in developing countries so it means of course if you can run this device for a long time on your batteries," said Mr Demuynck.
 Johan Feenstra, Liquavista's founder, said the new tech combines the best of LCDs and e-ink readers |
He told the BBC that consumers increasingly expect new devices to have low power consumption.
However, Mr McQuivey questions whether people are prepared to pay more for a greener device, where an alternative is readily available.
"Consumers have become spoilt by LCD technology. They are used to charging their devices twice a day and won't pay a huge premium for something that simply doesn't need charging as often," he said.
"So the question is how quickly these new screen technologies can be produced at scale and at what cost," he added.
Liquavista said the manufacturing process is very similar to that for LCDs so existing production lines could be adapted rather than building new facilities.
"That would give it a big advantage over competing new screen technologies like e-ink or OLED which require largely new production processes," Mr McQuivey said.
In the longer-term, Liquavista is exploring other possibilities for the technology with UK e-reader firm Plastic Logic. They hope to produce a flexible colour magazine that can update itself and run video within three years.
Finland's schools score consistently at the top of world rankings, yet the pupils have the fewest number of class hours in the developed world.
| By Tom Burridge BBC World News America, Helsinki |
Last year more than 100 foreign delegations and governments visited Helsinki, hoping to learn the secret of their schools' success.
In 2006, Finland's pupils scored the highest average results in science and reading in the whole of the developed world. In the OECD's exams for 15 year-olds, known as PISA, they also came second in maths, beaten only by teenagers in South Korea.
 | Education in South Korea  In South Korea, the school day is long and pupil's have a much stricter study regime.  |
This isn't a one-off: in previous PISA tests Finland also came out top.
The Finnish philosophy with education is that everyone has something to contribute and those who struggle in certain subjects should not be left behind.
A tactic used in virtually every lesson is the provision of an additional teacher who helps those who struggle in a particular subject. But the pupils are all kept in the same classroom, regardless of their ability in that particular subject.
Finland's Education Minister, Henna Virkkunen is proud of her country's record but her next goal is to target the brightest pupils.
''The Finnish system supports very much those pupils who have learning difficulties but we have to pay more attention also to those pupils who are very talented. Now we have started a pilot project about how to support those pupils who are very gifted in certain areas.''
The BBC's Tom Burridge talks to Henna Virkkunen, the Minister of Education and Science in Finland.
Late learners
According to the OECD, Finnish children spend the fewest number of hours in the classroom in the developed world.
This reflects another important theme of Finnish education.
 Children walk around in their socks at Torpparinmäki Comprehensive |
Primary and secondary schooling is combined, so the pupils don't have to change schools at age 13. They avoid a potentially disruptive transition from one school to another.
Teacher Marjaana Arovaara-Heikkinen believes keeping the same pupils in her classroom for several years also makes her job a lot easier.
''I'm like growing up with my children, I see the problems they have when they are small. And now after five years, I still see and know what has happened in their youth, what are the best things they can do. I tell them I'm like their school mother.''
Children in Finland only start main school at age seven. The idea is that before then they learn best when they're playing and by the time they finally get to school they are keen to start learning.
Less is more
| Education in the United States  "If education is expensive, try ignorance" |
Finnish parents obviously claim some credit for the impressive school results. There is a culture of reading with the kids at home and families have regular contact with their children's teachers.
Teaching is a prestigious career in Finland. Teachers are highly valued and teaching standards are high.
The educational system's success in Finland seems to be part cultural. Pupils study in a relaxed and informal atmosphere.
Finland also has low levels of immigration. So when pupils start school the majority have Finnish as their native language, eliminating an obstacle that other societies often face.
The system's success is built on the idea of less can be more. There is an emphasis on relaxed schools, free from political prescriptions. This combination, they believe, means that no child is left behind.
| By Patrick Jackson BBC News |
Scientists have found the first animals that can survive and reproduce entirely without oxygen, deep on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea.
The team, led by Roberto Danovaro from Marche Polytechnic University in Ancona, Italy, found three new species from the Loricifera group.
He told BBC World Service they were about a millimetre in size and looked like jellyfish in a protective shell.
"We plan to go back and see if there are new surprises for us," he added.
|  It is a real mystery how these creatures are able to live without oxygen because until now we thought only bacteria could do this  Professor Roberto Danovaro |
One of the three new Loriciferans (so-called because of their protective layer, or lorica) has already been officially named Spinoloricus Cinzia, after the professor's wife.
The other two, currently designated Rugiloricus and Pliciloricus, have still to be formally described.
They were discovered in the course of three oceanographic expeditions conducted over a decade in order to search for living fauna in the sediment of the Mediterranean's L'Atalante basin.
The basin, 200km (124m) off the western coast of Crete, is about 3.5km (2.2m) deep and is almost entirely depleted of oxygen, or anoxic.
Eggs included
Bodies of multicellular animals have been found previously in sediment taken from an anoxic area - or "dead zone" - of the Black Sea, Professor Danovaro told BBC News. But these were believed at the time to be remains of organisms which had sunk there from adjacent oxygenated areas.
What the team found in the L'Atalante dead zone was three species of living animals, two of which contained eggs.
Although it was not possible to extract the animals alive in order to show that they could live without oxygen, the team was able to incubate the eggs in anoxic conditions aboard on the ship.
The eggs hatched successfully in a completely oxygen-free environment.
"It is a real mystery how these creatures are able to live without oxygen because until now we thought only bacteria could do this," said Professor Danovaro, who heads Italy's Association of Limnology (the study of inland waters).
"We did not think we could find any animal living there. We are talking about extreme conditions - full of salt, with no oxygen."
 The team made three oceanographic expeditions over a decade |
The discovery of the new Loriciferans represents, he said, a "tremendous adaptation for animals which evolved in oxygenated conditions".
Dead zones in the world's oceans, he added, were expanding all the time.
Commenting in the journal BMC Biology, Lisa Levin of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography said that before this discovery, "no one had found [animals] capable of living and reproducing entirely in the absence of oxygen".
"Loriciferans are rarely reported," she noted.
"Whether they were overlooked or are exceedingly rare and thus not sampled is unclear. Perhaps scientists have been looking for them in all the wrong places."
Considering the implications of creatures which can exist without oxygen, she said that greater study of animal-microbe interactions in the extreme environment of Earth's oceans could help answer questions about the possibility of life existing on other planets with different atmospheres.
 Erdogan's comments will further deepen mistrust |
Turkey's Prime Minister has described Israel as the "main threat to peace" in the Middle East.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan was speaking during a visit to Paris.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded saying he regretted Turkey's "repeated attacks" on Israel.
Relations between the two countries have been worsening since the Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip in 2009, made worse by a recent diplomatic row.
Mr Erdogan was speaking to journalists before meeting the French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
"It is Israel that is the main threat to regional peace," he said.
"If a country uses disproportionate force, in Palestine, in Gaza, uses phosphorus bombs we are not going to say 'well done.'"
Both Israel and Hamas, which control the Gaza Strip, have been accused by the UN of war crimes during the 22-day offensive in December 2008 and January 2009.
Humiliation
Mr Netanyahu said he regretted the Turkish prime minister's comments.
![Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon meeting Turkish Ambassador Ahmet Oguz Celikkol, captioned "the height of humiliation" in Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom [Image: Lior Mizrahi/Israel Hayom]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_v4LVT8eH7DZUCnBbyc4rpWoCHBjp1m8fIG2srLdFt__hj-02kGjed0jZYiN7fWX7N-JGQ5S7XsFN2HvWroyAsKpjRB00Mi4St33o5-IlSQLE3dDFmtK4dlcWqECLxdkZ-BJw0Ls-4DgxcYZJM=s0-d) The Turkish envoy was made to sit lower than the Israeli deputy minister |
"We are interested in good relations with Turkey and regret that Mr Erdogan chooses time after time to attack Israel," he told reporters in Israel.
The countries have been allies in the past.
But earlier this week, the Turkish ambassador to Israel was recalled by Ankara, weeks after being humiliated in public by the Israeli deputy foreign minister.
Ambassador Oguz Celikkol was called into the Israeli foreign ministry in January and rebuked over a Turkish television series that showed Israeli intelligence agents kidnapping children.
Mr Celikkol was made to sit on a low chair while being lectured by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.
Mr Ayalon later apologised for the rebuke.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared Mr Erdogan to Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi.
| By Andres Schipani BBC News, La Paz |
 Many Bolivians admit they struggle to be on time |
In almost any city, anywhere in the world, you could find yourself stuck in a traffic jam from 0700 to 0900.
But not in La Paz in Bolivia - 9am is when rush hour really starts.
People begin heading to work then, even if they were supposed to be at their office or factory 30 minutes or even an hour earlier.
This chronic lateness is the result of what is known as "Bolivian time" which the government is now aiming to tackle with bonuses for punctual workers.
Samuel Mendoza, a taxi driver in La Paz, considers himself a Bolivian exception. Because he works mainly with foreigners, he says, he is forced to be on time.
 Taxi driver Samuel Mendoza has got used to being on time |
Mr Mendoza knows his compatriots well. Most Bolivians, he explains, take being late as part of their duty.
"Bolivians are really irresponsible, there is no culture of punctuality here, they don't arrive on time to work or anywhere else, it seems they don't wear a watch on their wrist," he says.
"It is just something very Bolivian."
Indeed it is. In Bolivia, if you are told to meet somebody at a certain time, it is quite likely that the person will show up 30 minutes late - if you are lucky.
But the Bolivian government thinks things should change. It is working on a labour reform that, among other things, aims to break this national habit of arriving late for everything, from work to meetings to dates.
| Bolivians aren't known for their time-keeping Victor Hugo Chavez Ministry of Labour lawyer |
And the government has decided that the only way to change habits is to offer a financial incentive. In one of South America's poorest countries, that extra money might mean a lot to many people.
"Bolivians are not traditionally known for their time-keeping. So Bolivians who arrive at work on the dot every day could get a 'punctuality bonus', a recognition," Victor Hugo Chavez, a lawyer from the Ministry of Labour, told the BBC.
And it might mean a lot for the economy. The government of President Evo Morales believes Bolivians' tardiness costs the country millions of dollars in lost work time.
National sickness
"We think this will increase productivity, and hence be good for the economic development of our impoverished country," Mr Chavez said.
The reform is likely to be voted into law this month without being drastically changed, because Mr Morales' party has a majority in Congress.
It should be noted that Mr Morales also seems to suffer this national trait. He is often late for rallies and public appearances.
On one occasion, journalists - including your correspondent - walked out of the presidential palace in anger after he made them wait nearly two hours for a news conference.
Government projects seem to proceed at the same languid pace. Roadworks in the middle of La Paz, for example, should have produced a tunnel months ago. It has just been completed.
 Bolivian student Patricia says even lecturers cannot be on time |
"Workers are sometimes late, sometimes very late", said Aristoteles Ona, one of the site managers. "There's nothing one can do, that's 'Bolivian time'."
Students at a central university in La Paz also struggle to shed light on the national "condition".
"Sometimes my lecturers show up 15 minutes, sometimes half an hour late. And sometimes they don't even show up," says Patricia, who is taking a degree in computer science.
"It was the same when I was at kindergarten, primary and secondary school. So a lot of times I'm late too. I've been absorbing that lateness for years."
She adds, with some resignation: "That is our time, the 'Bolivian time'. I am not sure this bill will manage to change something so quintessentially Bolivian."
| By Jon Donnison BBC News, Gaza |
Video of a car being smuggled into the southern Gaza Strip
In the gloomy half light, a bulldozer strains to pull something through a roughly cut tunnel.
It's over 2m (6.5ft) high and close to 3m (10ft) wide, propped up by wooden supports.
Workers shout encouragement as the ceiling begins to collapse.
Suddenly a car, headlights glaring, lurches forward.
Filmed deep underground on the border between Gaza and Egypt, the mobile phone footage obtained by the BBC is conclusive proof of what has been rumoured in Gaza since last year - the tunnelling operation is now so advanced that entire brand new cars are now being smuggled into Gaza.
Desperate times
"What else could I do?" says Ahmed Bahloul, a successful businessman who owns a car garage, standing next to his brand new black Hyundai saloon.
"I wanted a new car, but because of Israel's blockade, the only way I could get it is through the tunnels."
|  We only have one car in the showroom... I can't sell it because it is the only new car I have to put on display Marwan Kishawi, Car dealer |
For the past three years, Israel has enforced a tightened economic blockade on Gaza, only allowing in limited humanitarian aid.
Israel says this is necessary to stop weapons being smuggled in to Palestinian militant groups inside Gaza and to put pressure on the Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Strip.
Egypt has also closed its border with Gaza, only opening it occasionally.
But hundreds of tunnels have been dug under the border, through which a vast range of goods is smuggled in from Egypt.
Mr Bahloul paid $38,000 (£25,000) for his new car. Of that, $10,000 went to the tunnel operators, he says.
"It's a lot of money, but I wanted a new car," he says.
Bigger tunnels
There are very few new cars in Gaza. Locals estimate that only around 200 have been smuggled in through the tunnels in the past three years.
In the past, cars were cut up to smuggle them though narrower tunnels. But the tunnels have now been widened.
 Ahmed Bahloul, proud owner of a brand new Hyundai |
The lack of new cars means many cars in Gaza have seen better days.
It is not uncommon to see cars 20 or 30 years old belching black smoke from the exhaust.
Many Gazans resort to re-spraying old cars to make them look new.
In a busy paint shop just outside Gaza, workers in face masks are sanding down the bodywork of old cars before repainting them.
"Lots of people come back here over and over again," says Mohammed who works in the paint shop. "Some of the cars are 30 years old."
The number of motorbikes in Gaza has risen dramatically in the past three years because they are easier to smuggle.
Empty showrooms
There are still new car dealers in Gaza, but their showrooms are virtually empty.
Marwan Kishawi's family has been dealing Mercedes cars in Gaza City for more than 40 years.
 Mohamed's paint shop does a thriving business |
"Now we only have one car in the showroom," he says pointing at a bright yellow stretch taxi limousine.
"I have had this car for seven years. I have had many offers to buy it, but I can't sell it because it is the only new car I have to put on display."
Mr Kishawi says he used to import more than 100 cars a year from Israel, as well as $300,000 (£200,000) worth of parts a year.
Mr Kishawi says he cannot bring his cars in through the tunnels because they are too valuable and his suppliers at Mercedes will not allow it to happen.
He says he is spending thousands of dollars to keep the cars he has bought in storage at the border because Israel and Egypt will not allow them in.
"I haven't sold a new car for almost three years," he says, shaking with frustration. "It's desperate now."
