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Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ From foreign press Water drilled from rock in a North American mine is among the oldest yet found on Earth, say scientists. Novel dating techniques used by the Canadian and UK team suggest the fluid is at least 1.5 billion years old. The water was probably once on the surface and then percolated through the ground where it became trapped at a depth of 2.4km. The discovery, made under Timmins, Ontario, is reported in this week's edition of the journal Nature. Although far from any light source, particular types of micro-organism could survive in the water--it is rich in dissolved gases like hydrogen and methane. "There are similar waters in South Africa that are tens of millions of years old, and they contain microbes that have adapted to that environment," explained Prof Chris Ballentine from Manchester University. "These are microbes that can survive on the energy from the natural water-rock interactions," he told BBC News. xxxxxxx U.S. researchers said Wednesday they have created the first global topographic map of Saturn's largest moon Titan, one of the most Earth-like in the solar system. Titan is the only moon in the solar system known to have clouds, surface liquids and a thick atmosphere. The cold atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, like Earth's, but the organic compound methane on Titan acts the way water vapor does on Earth, forming clouds and falling as rain and carving the surface with rivers. "Titan has so much interesting activity--like flowing liquids and moving sand dunes--but to understand these processes it's useful to know how the terrain slopes," Ralph Lorenz, a researcher from U.S. space agency NASA who led the map-design team, said in a press release. "It's especially helpful to those studying hydrology and modeling Titan's climate and weather, who need to know whether there is high ground or low ground driving their models." The researchers said almost all the data used to compile the map comes from NASA's Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft, which has flown past the moon nearly 100 times over the past decade. On many of those flybys, Cassini has used a radar imager, which can peer through Titan's thick haze, and the radar data can be used to estimate the surface height, they said. The researchers described the map, published as part of a paper in the journal Icarus, as "an interim product" as Cassini has only imaged about half of Titan's surface and more observations are still needed. Lorenz said it could be worth revising when the Cassini mission ends in 2017, when more data will have accumulated, filling some of the gaps in present coverage. "We felt we couldn't wait and should release an interim product, " he said. "The community has been hoping to get this for a while. I think it will stimulate a lot of interesting work." xxxxxx Singapore remained as the fourth most popular place in the world to live and work for professionals, a survey by recruitment firm Hydrogen and business school ESCP Europe released on Wednesday. The city-state's ranking was the same as in the survey last year, while the top three destinations were also still the United States, Britain and Australia. But the top three saw their dominance coming up again. The report showed that 24 percent of the respondents picked the United States as the top relocation destination, 11 percentage higher than the 13 percent last year. Britain and Australia each got 13 percent of the votes, up from 9 percent in last survey. Singapore got 9 percent of the votes, up from 6 percent last year. The report said Singapore has emerged as the "leading technology hub as well as a key finance one." "Singapore is very high up the value chain in terms of what it does in technology. Singapore has an exceptionally well-educated workforce, is a very innovative country and is producing the new tech entrepreneurs and engineers who are creating much of the high tech industry of the future, for example in life sciences, medical equipment and biotech," Simon Walker, Hydrogen's Asia managing director commented in the report. The report ranked Hong Kong as the second most popular destination, following the United Arab Emirates (UAE), for relocating global professionals to stay on longer than they originally intended. The report, which interviewed over 2,000 people globally, also showed that 83 percent of the respondents who had relocated said they believed it had accelerated their personal development.