A new forum that wants to put high fashion together with sustainable fabrics launched alongside Milan’s womenswear shows last week, aiming to marry materials made of wood, plants and even milk with innovative design. CLASS—Creativity, Lifestyle and Sustainable Synergy—is the brainchild of Giusy Bettoni and Sandy McLennan, who had both had careers in the textile industry and saw a gap where designers could not easily find “green” fabrics. They had seen that on the other side, producers of sustainable fabrics—ones that are biodegradeable, or made from renewable resources—had problems working out how and where to contact designers who might want to use the products. CLASS is bringing companies such as India’s Birla Cellulose, one of the largest cellulose producers in the world, and NatureWorks, which makes Ingeo fibre from plant sugars, into contact with stylists, to show that sustainable does not have to be stolid.

In a primitive tool, evidence of trading in the Pacific

East Polynesia, those remote eastern Pacific islands like Tahiti, the Marquesas and the Tuamotus, was the last part of the planet to be settled, reached by peoples from the western Pacific who voyaged over broad stretches of ocean in canoes, starting about 4,000 years ago. There has always been a question of how expert these ocean travellers were—whether the voyages were lucky accidents or purposeful expeditions. Most anthropologists think these voyagers knew what they were doing, but no one knows for certain. But Kenneth D. Collerson and Marshall I. Weisler of the University of Queensland in Australia provide some clues, through a study of old stone adzes found on the Tuamotus. The adzes have basalt blades. Since they were found on coral atolls, the basalt had to come from volcanic islands elsewhere. By determining concentrations of trace elements and certain isotopes in each blade, the researchers were able to determine where they came from. The study was published in Science. Most of the blades were found to have come from four island groups, suggesting there was extensive trading across more than 1,000 miles of ocean.

Playing with blocks helps children with language, says a study

Playing with blocks helps young children gain language skills, a small study concluded onMonday. After six months, language scores among half of 175 children aged 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 who were sent plastic blocks were 15 percent higher than a matched group that did not receive the free blocks, according to the study by researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Biologists aim to wipe out “Rat Island”

Two centuries after rats first landed on a remote Aleutian island from a shipwreck, wildlife managers in Alaska are plotting how to evict the non-native rodent from the island that bears their name. Rat Island, like many other treeless, volcanic islands in the 1,609-km long Aleutian chain, is infested with rats that have proved devastating to wild birds that build nests in the earth or in rocky cliffs.

Not all types of fat are harmful

While it has long been held that too much fat in the liver may result in diabetes, researchers appear to have discovered that not all types of fat are harmful. Writing in the latest issue of Nature Medicine, a group of Japanese scientists described how they changed the fat composition in the livers of mutant mice and fed them exactly the same rich, fatty diet as other mice.

Sushi craze threatens giant tuna

Fishermen like Diego

Crespo have trapped the giant tuna swarming into the warm Mediterranean for over 3,000 years, but he says this year may be one of his last. Japanese demand for its fatty flesh to make sushi has sparked a fishing frenzy for the Atlantic bluefin tuna—a torpedo-shaped brute weighing up to half a tonne that can accelerate faster than a Porsche 911.