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Britain has brought online a new desalination plant near London capable of providing the city with 150 million gallons (568 million litres) of water per day, should the need arise. At a cost of £270 ($445) million, and built over the past four years, the plant uses reverse osmosis to remove salt from the brackish water pumped in from the Thames Estuary, which it then pumps into local reservoirs, thus staving off the threat of drought.

In a solar cell, sunlight hits a light-harvesting material, causing it to release electrons that can be harnessed to produce an electric current. The new MIT research, published online this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, is based on findings that carbon nanotubes - microscopic, hollow cylinders of pure carbon - can enhance the efficiency of electron collection from a solar cell's surface.

According to a report released by Freedom House titled Freedom on the Net 2011, Iran is the worst country when it comes to online freedom.  The top three countries, in order, are Estonia, The United States and Germany. The study judged countries based on three specific criteria: Obstacles to internet access, limits on content and violations of user rights.  They assigned each country a numerical score based on those criteria.  Countries scoring from 0-30 are designated "free," countries scoring from 31-60 are designated "party free" and those with score of 61-100 are labelled "not free."

Using simple robots to simulate genetic evolution over hundreds of generations, Swiss scientists provide quantitative proof of kin selection and shed light on one of the most enduring puzzles in biology: Why do most social animals, including humans, go out of their way to help each other? In next week's issue of the online, open access journal PLoS Biology, EPFL robotics professor Dario Floreano teams up with University of Lausanne biologist Laurent Keller to weigh in on the oft-debated question of the evolution of altruism genes.

A new study from the Karolinska Institute and Stockholm School of Economics shows that the brain has built-in mechanisms that trigger an automatic reaction to someone who refuses to share. In the study publishing next week in the online open access journal PLoS Biology, the subjects' sense of justice was challenged in a two-player monetary fairness game, and their brain activity was simultaneously measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). When bidders made unfair suggestions as to how to share the money, they were often punished by their partners even if it cost them. This reaction to unfairness could be reduced by targeting one specific brain region, the amygdala.