A study released on Tuesday revealed that elephant seals were instrumental in gathering additional information on ice formation, ocean currents, and climate change. Learn more about this after the jump!

Imagine connection speeds up to 60 times more than what we have today. That'd be a miracle, since we all know that even if the fastest pipelines are laid, there are still the limitations of electronics to deal with. Luckily, Australian scientists have found a way to drop electronics altogether, and make circuits fully photonic. Yes, photonic. The future awaits at the full story.

Believe it or not, a revolutionary form of transportation has been designed to travel twice the speed of Concorde and five times the speed of sound.

At its speed, the A2 aircraft can travel from London to Australia in under five hours while still being able to board 300 passengers. Details of the plane in the full article.

This week's dose of Blu-ray releases differ greatly from the previous week's themes of action and zombies. This week, we've got a courtroom drama, a drama set in Coney Island, and three comedies. Check out the full article for more info.

Remember that holiday deal Sony was offering in Australia? Where people who by a Sony HD Bravia TV will get a free 40 GB PlayStation 3? Well you might have been feeling a little left out if you lived somewhere else. Well now the deal's been extended to the US as well! Yep, a free PS3 with a Bravia in the US. More details in the full article.

Thinking about what to treat yourself to this Christmas? Well, a Bravia and a PlayStation 3 would make a nice gift. How you ask? Sony Australia so happens to have a Bravia-PS3 promo in light of the holidays. More details regarding this promo after the jump.

The impressive XEL-1 OLED TV from Sony wouldn't be available until December 1 in Japan, but direct sales website Sony Style for the region is already taking pre-sales for the home entertainment product. First announced a couple of months ago, the TV set sports a 3-millimeter thin 960x540 resolution display and 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.

Pricing has not changed as the organic light-emitting diode TV is still pegged at 200,000 Yen or roughly around US$ 1,807. The full details can be had via the "read more" link below.

Hybrid cars aren't the only thing that's going green. By 2009, Australia's Solar Sailor is planning to set up solar-powered ferry boats to sail across San Francisco Bay, carrying tourists and passengers alike.

If all goes well, the boat will be ferrying passengers in two years time. The boat still runs on diesel, but it mostly gets around on wind or solar power.

The full story after the jump!

Many phones with access to email are now available in the market, and there is no need to spend big bucks to afford a phone with such feature. Given that more people are demanding email on the go, research firm Gartner believes that SMS would soon be a goner.

According to the firm, one of five people will be using mobile email by 2010. 20 million wireless email users today will grow to a whopping 350 million on the same year, said firm's research vice president Monica Blasso. She noticed that the availability of low-cost phones with mobile email functions is driving consumer adaptation.

"Once email becomes available more or less free of charge by default on your mobile handset, people will gravitate to that rather than just continuing to use SMS," added Robin Simpson, mobile and wireless research director at Gartner Australasia. This is due to mobile email access being offered free as part of mobile phone contracts in Australia, he said.

According to Simpson, low mobile email uptake in Australia can be credited to high costs, but competition between carriers like Hutchison 3 and Virgin Mobile will drop prices rapidly. "The interesting thing is that SMS, if you look at it in terms of actual cost for the data, is really expensive, and where we're heading is you'll get a free email package when you sign up to your monthly plan," he continued.

Sony Australia is very confident in Blu-ray's dominance over HD-DVD. Toshiba general manager Mark Whittard stated that the war is "far from over," but Sony Australia managing director Carl Rose begged to differ.

"Let's get things in perspective here. Despite all the hyperbole whipped up in the media, so far there is no format war in Australia," Rose said at the Experience More event in Sydney.

To back it up, Sony unveiled statistics that show Blu-ray's massive advantage over the competing high-def format. "You've just got to take a look at the industry support and the sales figures to see that," Rose added.

A chart Rose dished out reveal that Blu-ray takes the lead in hardware alone, even without the PS3 numbers. The BDP-S1, Sony's new standalone Blu-ray player, released last month gave Sony an edge over HD-DVD players with an 80:10 ratio, he said.

"The S1 joined PlayStation 3 in the market and as a result, over 90 per cent of the High Definition packaged media sales are on the Blu-ray format," he continued. Another player with a lower price, the S300 which will ship this September, is expected to "fuel the market" in Australia.