British claymation characters Wallace and Gromit have been nominated for this year's Academy Awards - the sixth time in their history.

Their 2008 short A Matter of Loaf and Death has been nominated for the award for "Short Film (Animated)". The film was first broadcast on Christmas Day, and was watched by over half of the British viewing public at the time with 14.25 million people seeing it on BBC One.

However, because it was broadcast so late in the year it missed the deadline to be entered in the 2009 Oscars. Despite this, creator, director and co-writer Nick Park said to the BBC at the time: "We have never made films for awards, though. We do them for the fun of it."

Wallace and Gromit are among the most successful animated characters in terms of Oscars. Every single film featuring them has been nominated for an award, with only their first appearance in A Grand Day Out failing to win, losing out to Creature Comforts, also created by Nick Park.

The other nominees are French Roast, Granny O’Grimm's Sleeping Beauty, The Lady and the Reaper and Logorama.

"When doctors and staff realized that a cat living in a U.S. nursing home could sense when someone was going to die, the feline, Oscar, was portrayed as a furry grim reaper or four-legged angel of death.

But Dr. David Dosa, who broke the news of Oscar's abilities in a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007, said he never intended to make Oscar sound creepy or his arrival at a bedside to be viewed negatively."

Spokane convention All Fur Fun may hold a one-day event this year, according to event organizers Tora Kiyoshi and Moorcat.

The con served almost 200 attendees last year, but fell into debt after several setbacks, including a chandelier accident.

To make matters worse, the US Olympic figure skating tryouts were held in Spokane this year, disrupting hotel bookings.

Current plans are for a one-day event on 15 May, including an art show, after which attendees can participate in the Spokane Lilac Festival Torchlight Parade before returning to the hotel for a party. A full weekend event is expected for 2011.

In related news, proposed Arizonan convention Phoenix Furness looks to be no more, as inquiries on its journal go without official answer.

A team led by Russian WikiFur administrator Shnatsel have released the first beta of a furry-themed version of Linux distribution Ubuntu.

The collaboration includes a boot skin, several wallpapers by Kosh (Alexander Faolchu), icons, a Metacity themes, a GIMP splash screen, and eight sets of smilies. A full GTK+ theme and logon screen are scheduled for future builds.

A prior effort to create such a distribution — Furbuntu — appears to have stalled in 2008.

The Melbourne Herald Sun reports development of pig lungs compatible with human blood. Such organs could fill a real need; 200 died last year on waiting lists in Australia alone.

The genetically-modified pigs do not express a certain antigen that causes the blood to clot. Research on such "knock-out" pigs has been going on for over two decades.

There is an ongoing debate about the ethics of creating such "chimeras." Still, replacement of human heart valves with pig valves or cow cardiac tissue is already widespread.