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Age of the podcast sermon The vicar of a small rural church in Suffolk, Britain, has become a podcasting celebrity since posting his sermons on Apple's iTunes music store last month. The Reverend Leonard Payne, vicar of the St Nicholas church in Wrentham, said more than 2,000 people had downloaded the sermons, with demand so intense at one point that the church had to change servers to meet it. St Nicholas' orginally developed its own website, www.six-ten.org, to distribute the podcasts, but demand has surged since the listing in iTunes, the world's largest online music store. 'Six-ten began recording the sermons and putting them on its website for people who couldn't attend the service to download and listen at home,' Mr Leonard said. 'However, by re-engineering the audio stream we have been able to lodge it on iTunes, making us probably one of the first, if not the first, church in the UK to do so.' Nick Clarke, diocesan communications director, said: 'This is another example of how the church is embracing technology to keep its message relevant for a 21st century audience. It's about doing church differently for a diverse and obviously 'hungry' audience.'

Snow works in summer The Bibai Natural Energy Research Organisation in Hokkaido, Japan, is using snow stored from the winter months to power air conditioners in the municipal government offices. A 30-square-metre section of the lobby has been set aside for the project. A pool loaded into a container holds a two-tonne block of ice and water, and the cooled water is sent to two separate cooling systems. A new snow block is put into the pool every Saturday. 'The air is not too humid and not too dry. It's comfortable,' one resident said.

All smiles for robotic jaw Scientists at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, are developing a robotic human jaw as part of a wider study on the mechanics of chewing and food technology. A team led by John Bronlund and associate professor Peter Xu at the Institute of Engineering and Technology are mathematically modelling the muscles of the human face to reproduce jaw movement through muscle contraction and hope the prototype jaw will be ready in six months. Six actuators will drive the bottom jaw, while the top half of the human jaw remains fixed. Dr Bronlund said the ability of the jaw to mechanically replicate the chewing actions of humans has applications across medicine and food technology. Dental researchers can use the jaw to study the response of dental implants to the chewing of different foods and to evaluate the impact of impaired dentition on chewing efficiency. In the future the robot will be taught to adaptively chew food.

Super catcher Scientists at the University of Tokyo have developed a robotic hand capable of catching a ball hurled towards it at 300km per hour, or 83 metres per second. Photo detectors embedded in the robot's palm can track the ball's trajectory at high speed, while image processing units stimulate the hand into action when the ball approaches. High speed actuators enable the robot's fingers to move through 180 degrees in 0.1 second, allowing the hand to catch the ball comfortably at high speed. 'The need for a robotic hand that works in the real world is growing,' Akio Namiki, a professor at the university, told the New Scientist. 'Such a system should be able to adapt to changes in its environment and we think the concept of high-speed movement with real-time visual feedback will become an important issue in robotic research.' The system is not yet sturdy enough to catch a hard ball, and was only tested with soft balls. But in other tests, the robotic hand could grasp varying objects, including cylinders.

Ufida launches hugely enhanced software suite Ufida, the mainland technology company formerly known as UFSoft, has re-engineered its flagship business-automation software to kick-start an ambitious global expansion drive.

The Beijing-based firm's revamped NC Collaboration Suite, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system geared for large corporations and multinational businesses, was unveiled last week with what executives claimed were 1,200 'enhancements'.

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