Keeping pigeons amused is quite a skill, so thanks to the University of California, at Irvine, for plans to put tiny backpacks on the birds, each one filled with a satellite-tracking device, air-pollution sensor and basic mobile phone. It’s all thanks to fiendishly small microprocessing technology. Twenty tooled-up pigeons will be released in August to help to monitor the smog-filled skies above San José.

Aspiring writers can take heart from the success of Ruth Sacks Caplin. Her first screenplay, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, has been made into a film starring Dame Joan Plowright and was, briefly, tipped for an Oscar nod after picking up good reviews. Mrs Caplin, who lives in Maryland, is a sprightly 85-year-old.

Pilots, lorry drivers and other night workers would be more alert if exposed to blue light, suggests a report in the journal Sleep. Dr Steven Lockley, who ran the study at Harvard Medical School, says that “light may be a powerful countermeasure for the negative effects of fatigue for people who work at night”.

Sir Sean Connery has labelled efforts by Scottish politicians to promote the country overseas “a joke” (although others may find an avowed nationalist accepting a knighthood funnier). Instead, says the actor, they should be staying at home pressing for more powers to be devolved from Whitehall. “I think we should take to the streets,” he rails in a rallying call from his own home . . . in the Bahamas.

Sources: USAToday, New Scientist, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, ABC News, The Herald (Glasgow)