Science & Technology

• 31 Auguast 2005
  "In a finding that is likely to intensify the debate over what to teach students about the origins of life, a poll released yesterday found that nearly two-thirds of Americans say that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools. The poll found that 42 percent of respondents held strict creationist views, agreeing that 'living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.' In contrast, 48 percent said they believed that humans had evolved over time. But of those, 18 percent said that evolution was 'guided by a supreme being,' and 26 percent said that evolution occurred through natural selection. In all, 64 percent said they were open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution, while 38 percent favored replacing evolution with creationism." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 30 Auguast 2005
  "For the past 50 years or so, chicken eggs have played a vital role in producing the flu vaccine. Now scientists report another application for the breakfast staple: manufacturing fully functional human monoclonal antibodies, molecules that mimic the immune system to fight specific invaders...In a bid to manufacture the antibodies in a more cost-efficient manner, Etches and his colleagues recruited chickens to man the production lines. First, they inserted genes encoding one antibody, as well as genes that controlled its expression, into chicken embryonic stem cells. These stem cells were then introduced into developing chick embryos. When the resulting animals themselves laid eggs, they contained milligram amounts of the desired antibodies. The resulting monoclonal antibodies also demonstrated a 10- to 100-fold increase in cell-killing ability compared to those produced by conventional cell culture approaches." Learn more in the Scientific American.

• 29 Auguast 2005
  "The National Science Foundation is planning an effort to fundamentally re-engineer the Internet and overcome its shortcomings, creating a network more suited to the computerized world of the next decade. The new project, the Global Environment for Networking Investigations, was described for the first time by researchers and foundation officials at a technical meeting held in Philadelphia last week. The project, which has not yet received financing and may cost more than $300 million, is intended to include both a test facility and a research program. As described in documents circulated by National Science Foundation officials, the network will focus on security, 'pervasive computing' environments populated by mobile, wireless and sensor networks, control of critical infrastructure and the ability to handle new services that can be used by millions of people." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 26 Auguast 2005
  "A tiny robot called the "Bat-Bot" can use echolocation just like flesh-and-blood bats to distinguish one type of plant from another -- something most of us couldn't do with a guidebook and magnifying glass. Although Bat-Bot doesn't fly, it's a major step forward in using sonar or sound waves in the air, and an important development for autonomous or self-navigating robots. "Whenever a robot team wants to build an autonomous robot they look at sonar first, but they quickly run into problems," said Herbert Peremans, coordinator of the research project that produced the device and chief of the Active Perception Lab at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. Sonar-in-air applications have been relatively primitive compared with sonar use in water, so land-based autonomous vehicles use lasers and radar instead." Learn more in Wired News.

• 25 Auguast 2005
  "Flesh-eating maggots and bloodsucking leeches, long thought of as the tools of bygone medicine, have experienced a quiet renaissance among high-tech surgeons, and for two days beginning Thursday a federal board of medical advisers will discuss how to regulate them. Leeches, it turns out, are particularly good at draining excess blood from surgically reattached or transplanted appendages. As microsurgeons tackle feats like reattaching hands, scalps and even faces, leeches have become indispensable. And maggots clean festering wounds that fail to heal, as among diabetics, better than almost anything else, although their use in the United States has been slight, in part because of squeamishness. But neither leeches nor maggots have ever been subject to thorough regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. So the medical advisers are being asked to create general guidelines about how they should be safely grown, transported and sold." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 24 Auguast 2005
  "Scientists say they have made a significant step towards making human lungs for transplantation. The UK team at Imperial College London took human embryonic stem cells and encouraged them to grow into cells found in adult lungs. These lung cells are the type needed to allow oxygen to cross into the blood. Eventually, it may be possible to make them from other stem cell sources such as bone marrow, the team told Tissue Engineering. This would avoid some of the ethical concerns surrounding the use of embryonic tissue. At the moment, it is possible to treat people using donor organs, but there is a big shortage meaning many do not get the life-saving treatment they need. Stem cells are the body's "master cells" and can develop into a wide variety of different cell types. The lung cells made in the laboratory by the Imperial team are known as mature small airway epithelium, which line the part of the lung where oxygen is absorbed and carbon dioxide is excreted." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 23 Auguast 2005
  "Researchers in Switzerland have succeeded in breaking the cosmic speed limit by getting light to go faster than, well, light. Or is it all an illusion? Scientists have recently succeeded in doing all sorts of fancy things with light, including slowing it down and even stopping it all together. Now a team at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland is controlling the speed of light using simple off-the-shelf optical fibers, without the aid of special media such as cold gases or crystalline solids like in other experiments. 'This has the enormous advantage of being a simple, inexpensive procedure that works at any wavelength,' said Luc Thévenaz, lead author of the study detailing the research. Using a technique called Stimulated Brillouin Scattering, the researchers were able to slow down or ratchet up the speed of light like the gas pedal on a car. They succeeded in reducing the speed of light by almost a factor of 4 (although that’s still plenty fast at 46,500 miles per second), but even more dramatically, the team was also able to speed up the speed of light." Learn more in Live Science.

• 22 Auguast 2005
  "Harvard scientists announced they've discovered a way to fuse adult skin cells with embryonic stem cells, a promising and dramatic breakthrough that could lead to the creation of useful stem cells without first having to create and destroy human embryos. Members of the research team were to discuss their findings Monday. Preliminary results of the potentially groundbreaking research were disclosed Sunday on the Science magazine Web site. The scientists said they were able to show in their early research that the fused cell 'was reprogrammed to its embryonic state.' 'If future experiments indicate that this reprogrammed state is retained after removing the embryonic stem cell DNA -- currently a formidable technical hurdle -- the hybrid cells could theoretically be used to produce embryonic stem cells lines that are tailored to individual patients without the need to create and destroy human embryos,' said a summary of the research reported on the Science site." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 19 Auguast 2005
  "Carbon nanotubes, the wunderkind molecules of the nanoworld, are finally showing strength in numbers. Researchers have now made large nanotube sheets that have many of the same star qualities as the prima donna-like single molecules, bringing the promises of nanotechnology a step closer to reality. The flexible, transparent sheets can conduct electricity and emit light or heat when a voltage is applied, leading their creators to propose that our car windows and the canopies of military aircraft could contain nearly invisible antennae, electrical heaters for defrost, or informative optical displays. These sheets, which are presently several meters long but could potentially be much larger, might also be useful in everything from flexible computer screens that could be rolled into a sack, to light bulb-like devices providing uniform lighting, to strong sails that could be propelled in space by sunlight." Learn more at MSNBC.com.

• 18 Auguast 2005
  "Japanese researchers have developed a flexible artificial skin that could give robots a humanlike sense of touch. The team manufactured a type of 'skin' capable of sensing pressure and another capable of sensing temperature. These are supple enough to wrap around robot fingers and relatively cheap to make, the researchers have claimed. The University of Tokyo team describe their work in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers explain how pressure-sensing and temperature-sensing networks can be laminated together, forming an artificial skin that can detect both properties simultaneously. Takao Someya, lead author on the latest research, previously developed a form of artificial skin capable of sensing pressure.But the ability to sense temperature as well allows the scientists to more closely imitate the functions of human skin." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 17 Auguast 2005
  "The more we learn about the human genome, the less DNA looks like destiny. As scientists discover more about the 'epigenome,' a layer of biochemical reactions that turns genes on and off, they're finding that it plays a big part in health and heredity. By mapping the epigenome and linking it with genomic and health information, scientists believe they can develop better ways to predict, diagnose and treat disease. 'A new world is opening up, one that is so much more complex than the genomic world,' said Moshe Szyf, an epigeneticist at Canada's McGill University. The epigenome can change according to an individual's environment, and is passed from generation to generation. It's part of the reason why 'identical' twins can be so different, and it's also why not only the children but the grandchildren of women who suffered malnutrition during pregnancy are likely to weigh less at birth." Learn more in Wired News.

• 16 Auguast 2005
  "They have unraveled the complete genetic blueprint for rice - the staple for more than half of the world's population. The development - a key to future genetic blueprints for other cereals and grains - should make it far easier to engineer better, more nutritious crops that could trigger a second 'green revolution,' whose predecessor - using more traditional farming and breeding approaches - is said to be running out of gas. There's just one problem. It's not clear the world is ready for another food revolution if it involves splicing foreign genes into crops. 'The initial expectation that this technology would be rapidly adopted turned out to be a bit optimistic,' says Michael Rodemeyer, executive director of the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology. 'We're in a stall in the development of new GM foods.'" Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 15 Auguast 2005
  "An international research team has proposed new techniques that may lead to the mass production of meat reared not on the farm, but in the laboratory. Developments in tissue engineering mean that cells taken from animals could be grown directly into meat in a laboratory, the researchers say. Scientists believe the technology already exists to directly grow processed meat like a chicken nugget. The technology could benefit both humans and the environment. With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world's annual meat supply. And you could do it in a way that's better for the environment and human health. 'In the long term, this is a very feasible idea,' said Jason Matheny of the University of Maryland, part of the team whose research has been published in the Tissue Engineering journal. Growing the meat without the animal could reduce the need to keep millions of animals in cramped conditions and would lessen the damage caused by the meat production to the environment" Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 12 Auguast 2005
  "Satellite and weather-balloon research released Friday removes a last bastion of scientific doubt about global warming, researchers say. Surface temperatures have shown small but steady increases since the 1970s, but the tropics had shown little atmospheric heating — and even some cooling. Now, after sleuthing reported in three papers released by the journal Science, revisions have been made to that atmospheric data... After examining the satellite data, collected since 1979 by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellites, Carl Mears and Frank Wentz of Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, Calif., found that the satellites had drifted in orbit, throwing off the timing of temperature measures. Essentially, the satellites were increasingly reporting nighttime temperatures as daytime ones, leading to a false cooling trend." Learn more in USA Today.

• 11 Auguast 2005
  "The dangers of space weather could effectively scrub plans for a manned mission to Mars, a new study reports. Astronauts could be exposed to hazardous levels of radiation—unless forecasters improve their predictions and mission planners adequately protect their crews. Radiation can be a major hazard for astronauts in space. Enormous disturbances within the sun can send blasts of highly charged particles toward the Earth and beyond. These storms are massive explosions millions of times stronger than a nuclear bomb, triggered by colliding magnetic fields in the solar atmosphere. Current manned missions, like those of the space shuttle and International Space Station, take place in low-Earth orbits. Such missions generally enjoy the protection of Earth's magnetic field. But a Mars mission would send astronauts far beyond Earth's field for months at a time, increasing astronauts' exposure to radiation." Learn more in the National Geographic.

• 10 Auguast 2005
  "Would-be uranium miners are dusting off their Geiger counters. A worldwide shortage of uranium is pumping up prices and has led to a rush for mining claims in the western United States. More than 15,000 new claims have been filed in uranium-rich states in the last year, up from just a few the year before. 'This year alone we've received about 6,000,' said Pam Stilles at the Bureau of Land Management's office in Cheyenne, Wyoming. 'It's happened overnight.' Wyoming, which has some of the biggest uranium deposits in the United States, hadn't seen more than 100 new mining claims over the last 10 years combined. But now claim offices are jumping across the region. Utah and Colorado, two big players in the market, have gone from virtually no new claims for years, according to the BLM, to a combined 8,500 and rising in uranium-rich counties in 2005." Learn more in Wired News.

• 9 Auguast 2005
  "Mosquitoes are more attracted to people already infected with malaria. And this appears to be because the malarial parasite orchestrates its own onward transmission from within the human body, a new study suggests. 'Mosquitoes aren’t just a syringe, sucking up the parasite and injecting it into people at random, as scientists previously thought,' says Jacob Koella from the University of Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, who carried out the study in Kenya. Koella surrounded a chamber of uninfected Anopheles mosquitoes, which can carry the malarial parasite, with three tents. In one tent he placed a child infected with the transmissible stage of malaria, in the next a child in the non-transmissible stage, and in the third an uninfected child. He then wafted the odours from the children towards the mosquitoes using a fan. Twice as many mosquitoes targeted the child in the transmissible stage of malaria than each of the other two." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 8 Auguast 2005
  "They're being bred now by the millions, the mutants, created to carry the ghastliest of diseases for the benefit of the human race. Since researchers published the mouse's entire genetic makeup in map form three years ago, increasingly exotic rodents are being created with relative ease. There's the Schwarzenegger mouse — injected with muscle-building genes. The marathon mouse, which never seems to tire. Researchers recently engineered some mice to be extremely addicted to nicotine, and others to be immune to scrapie, a close cousin to the brain-wasting mad cow disease. And scientists are in hot pursuit of a Methuselah mouse, able to cheat death long after its natural brethren meet their maker. Millions of these and other mutant mice are routinely created now, by injecting disease-causing genes or 'knocking out' genes in mouse embryos. Their decreasing cost and increasing availability is helping researchers in pursuit of all manner of disease cures." Learn more in USA Today.

• 5 Auguast 2005
  "A sharp debate between scientists and religious conservatives escalated Tuesday over comments by President Bush that the theory of intelligent design should be taught with evolution in the nation's public schools. In an interview at the White House on Monday with a group of Texas newspaper reporters, Mr. Bush appeared to endorse the push by many of his conservative Christian supporters to give intelligent design equal treatment with the theory of evolution. Recalling his days as Texas governor, Mr. Bush said in the interview, according to a transcript, "I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught." Asked again by a reporter whether he believed that both sides in the debate between evolution and intelligent design should be taught in the schools, Mr. Bush replied that he did, 'so people can understand what the debate is about.' Mr. Bush was pressed as to whether he accepted the view that intelligent design was an alternative to evolution, but he did not directly answer." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 4 Auguast 2005
  "The world’s first cloned dog has been revealed by researchers. South Korea’s 'king of cloning', Woo Suk Hwang has successfully cloned an Afghan hound. The breakthrough is bound to lead to excitement among dog lovers who long to clone their dead pets, but Gerald Schatten at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, US, has stern words. 'We are not in the business of cloning pets,' he says. 'We perform nuclear transfer for medical research.' Producing 'Snuppy'– or Seoul National University puppy – was not easy. Hwang’s team put together 1095 eggs containing the DNA of a three-year-old adult male Afghan, and transferred them into 123 surrogate mothers. Just three pregnancies resulted: one miscarried, and two others went to term. One of the clones died from pneumonia at 22 days old." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 3 Auguast 2005
  "Dissident scientists advocating a controversial theory of the universe are having a field day in the wake of NASA's Deep Impact comet collision earlier this month. Scientists promoting the Electric Universe model say their predictions for the comet mission appear to have been more accurate than NASA's. The Electric Universe theorists, collected at Thunderbolts.info, believe that electricity, when factored properly into astrophysics, plays a greater role in the cosmos than the standard gravitational model, which says electrical forces are insignificant on a cosmic scale. Proponents of the Electric Universe model say they can explain many of the bizarre phenomena and mysteries in cosmology, from a swath of anomalies seen in the solar system to unusual surface features on Mars and Jupiter's moon, Titan. The theory can also sweep away the need for theoretical 'dark matter' and 'dark energy.' Comets are a cornerstone of the model, visible proof of the legitimacy of the theory as they traverse eccentric orbits around the sun." Learn more in Wired News.

• 2 Auguast 2005
  "Vaccines to combat a deadly pig-borne disease were flown to south-western China on Sunday, where the spread of the rare illness has already killed 36 people and infected 198. The unusually high numbers of people infected by the swine disease has led scientists to speculate that it may be being spread from human-to-human - or that another disease entirely is to blame. Streptococcus suis type II, although relatively common in swine, spreads to humans extremely rarely, and the size and virulence of this current outbreak, in the province of Sichuan, has taken the World Health Organization by surprise. The Chinese government responded on Sunday by airlifting the first batch of a vaccine for the infection – enough to treat 360,000 pigs – from the southern city of Guangzhou to the affected towns. The vaccine’s manufacturers say they will be producing enough vaccine to treat 10 million pigs in the coming days – but vaccines take three weeks to produce immunity in the pigs." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 1 Auguast 2005
  "A new kind of machine for decoding DNA may help bring costs so low that it would be feasible to decode an individual's DNA for medical reasons. The machine, developed by 454 Life Sciences of Branford, Conn., was used to resequence the genome of a small bacterium in four hours, its scientists report in an article published online today by the journal Nature. In 1995, when the same bacterium was first sequenced, by Claire M. Fraser, it required 24,000 separate operations spread over four to six months, she said in an e-mail message. The machine uses the chemistry of fireflies to generate a flash of light each time a unit of DNA is correctly analyzed." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 29 July 2005
  "This definitely ain't no refrigerator magnet. The new super magnet at The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory weighs more than 15 tons and has a magnetic field 420,000 times that of the Earth's — strong enough to pull a metal object out of a person's hand and send it flying — if people were allowed to get close enough. The laboratory — one of only nine high magnetic field labs in the world — unveiled the new magnet, 13 years in development, on Thursday. While the use of magnetic fields may not attract the interest of the average person, the new device is a major breakthrough that's exciting the scientific community and could lead to major advances in medicine, materials research and basic understanding of nature." Learn more in USA Today.

• 28 July 2005
  "What do you get when you join a 1981 DeLorean, a 'flux capacitor' and a digital dial set to Nov. 5, 1955? If you're the character of Dr. Emmett Brown in the 1985 movie Back to the Future, you've created a time machine. The possibility of time travel has occupied the fantasies of philosophers, authors, children and directors. But to some physicists, it's more than pure fancy. In the July issue of Physical Review Letters, Amos Ori, professor of physics at the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, argues that the laws of physics don't stand in the way of building a time machine. Ori hasn't created, or even designed, a physical time machine. He instead constructed a situation — a mathematical model — in which the laws of physics will make one for him. 'I write (the situation) mathematically. That doesn't mean that I know how to implement it practically.'" Learn more in USA Today.

• 27 July 2005
  "In an emergency room at a Finnish hospital, a man sprawled unconscious on an operating table as surgeons labored to reattach the hand he had lost hours earlier while chopping wood. Medical miracles take many forms, but few are as vivid and immediate as this: As the tiny blood vessels were sutured back together, the patient's hand flushed from porcelain to pink. The delicate tendons of the palm revived, and the skin's granite glaze began to soften. The man's fortunes had taken a remarkable turn. So, too, had those of Dr. Maria Siemionow, a surgical resident assisting in the operation. Thirty years later, microsurgery is a commonplace marvel, and as director of plastic surgery research at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Siemionow, 55, is a leading practitioner...A team led by Dr. Siemionow is planning to undertake what may be the most shocking medical procedure to occur in decades: a face transplant." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 26 July 2005
  "At least half a million New Yorkers have diabetes, many of them at risk for blindness, kidney failure, amputations and heart problems because they are doing a poor job of controlling their illness. The question is, how much privacy are they willing to give up for a chance at better health? A century after New York became the first American city to track people with infectious diseases as a way to halt epidemics, officials here propose a similar system to monitor people with diabetes. Conceived after a sharp rise in diabetes deaths over the past 20 years, the plan would require medical labs to report to the city the results of a certain type of test that indicates how well individual patients are controlling their diabetes. 'There will be some people who will say, "What business of the government is it to know that my diabetes is not in control?"' said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden. The answer, he said, is that diabetes costs an estimated $5 billion a year to treat in New York." Learn more in Wired News.

• 25 July 2005
  "Cell phones know whom you called and which calls you dodged, but they can also record where you went, how much sleep you got and predict what you're going to do next. At least, these are the capabilities of 100 customized phones given to students and employees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- and they may be coming soon to your cell phone. The phones were part of a Ph.D. project by MIT Media Lab researcher Nathan Eagle, who handed out the devices as a way to document the lives of students and employees of MIT, ranging from first-year undergrads and MBA students to Media Lab employees and professors. Eagle's Reality Mining project logged 350,000 hours of data over nine months about the location, proximity, activity and communication of volunteers, and was quickly able to guess whether two people were friends or just co-workers." Learn more in Wired News.

• 22 July 2005
  "From catalytic converters to alternative fuels, the fight against big-city smog has for years been fought inside combustion engines and exhaust pipes. Now, scientists are taking the fight to the streets by developing 'smart' building materials designed to clean the air with a little help from the elements. Using technology already available for self-cleaning windows and bathroom tiles, scientists hope to paint up cities with materials that dissolve and wash away pollutants when exposed to sun and rain 'Among other things, we want to construct concrete walls that break down vehicle exhausts in road tunnels,' said Karin Pettersson, a spokeswoman for Swedish construction giant Skanska. 'It is also possible to make pavings that clean the air in cities.' Learn more at CNN.com.

• 21 July 2005
  "For 26 years, strange conversations have been taking place in a basement lab at Princeton University. No one can hear them, but they can see their apparent effect: balls that go in certain directions on command, water fountains that seem to rise higher with a wish and drums that quicken their beat. Yet no one hears the conversations because they occur between the minds of experimenters and the machines they will to action. Researchers at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program, or Pear, have been attempting to measure the effect of human consciousness on machines since 1979. Using random event generators -- computers that spew random output -- they have participants focus their intent on controlling the machines' output. Out of several million trials, they've detected small but "statistically significant" signs that minds may be able to interact with machines." Learn more in Wired News.

• 20 July 2005
  "Most of us know where we are on planet Earth - or close enough to make do. But sometimes we travel on business or for pleasure and suddenly wonder: Where am I? Or maybe we might want to know the location of a spouse, teenager, or pet. More and more, GPS - the global positioning system - is coming to the rescue. But the satellite-based system has one big drawback: Its signals can't reach inside buildings or down into the skyscraper-lined streets of major cities, where millions of people live or work. The result? One of the era's breakthrough technologies - tracking the location of everything from packages to cellphone users in distress - remains impractical to much of the population. Now that appears likely to change. Racing to fill in the gaps where GPS can't reach, companies are experimenting with various wireless technologies." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 19 July 2005
  "A new technique for detecting dangerous pathogens could lead to faster and cheaper diagnosis of disease and prevent food poisoning, say US researchers. The team claims their biosensor is accurate enough to identify different strains of disease-causing organisms in a blood sample in just 30 minutes, and at a fraction of the current cost. The researchers hope the test could soon be incorporated into an inexpensive hand-held device for use in the field and in the developing world. Current biosensors rely on a costly and time-consuming technique called gene amplification, which involves taking a piece of DNA from the sample and adding enzymes to make enough copies to allow the pathogen to be detected. It can take up to 48 hours for a positive result. By contrast, the new process exploits a natural matching technique." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 18 July 2005
  "Farmers, businesses and state officials are investing millions of dollars in ethanol and biofuel plants as renewable energy sources, but a new study says the alternative fuels burn more energy than they produce. Supporters of ethanol and other biofuels contend they burn cleaner than fossil fuels, reduce U.S. dependence on oil and give farmers another market to sell their produce.But researchers at Cornell University and the University of California-Berkeley say it takes 29% more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces. For switch grass, a warm weather perennial grass found in the Great Plains and eastern North America United States, it takes 45% more energy and for wood, 57%." Learn more in USA Today.

• 15 July 2005
  "Can't remember phone numbers, worried about an upcoming exam or desperately want to give up smoking? In future, the answer will be simple: just pop a pill. The idea that an array of easily available and addiction-free drugs could be used to improve memory or increase intelligence is the stuff of science fiction dystopia - in Brave New World, Aldous Huxley created a whole planet under the spell of a pleasure drug called Soma. But a new report by leading scientists in the fields of psychology and neuroscience argues that, very soon, there really will be a pill for every ill. 'It is possible that [advances] could usher in a new era of drug use without addiction,' said the report by Foresight, the government's science-based thinktank...However, the report said the widespread adoption of new brain-enhancing drugs was not without risks and would raise 'significant ethical, social and practical issues.'" Learn more in the Guardian.

• 14 July 2005
  "Blogs are everywhere -- increasingly, the place where young people go to bare their souls, to vent, to gossip. And often they do so with unabashed fervor and little self-editing, posting their innermost thoughts for any number of Web surfers to see. ..Some are, however, finding that putting one's life online can have a price. A few bloggers, for instance, have been fired for writing about work on personal online journals. And Maya Marcel-Keyes, daughter of conservative politician Alan Keyes, discovered the trickiness of providing personal details online when her discussions on her blog about being a lesbian became an issue during her father's recent run for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois (he made anti-gay statements during the campaign). Experts say such incidents belong to a growing trend in which frank outpourings online are causing personal and public dramas." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 13 July 2005
  "A new bill proposing research into obtaining "morally acceptable" embryonic stem cells could give anti-abortion senators the out they've been hoping for. Conservative senators like Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Gordon Smith (R-Oregon) have supported efforts to federally fund embryonic stem-cell research in the past, going against their anti-abortion brethren. But a bill introduced June 30 by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Maryland) would put $15 million a year starting in 2006 toward developing scientific alternatives to destroying embryos. The alternatives remain theories, however, and have not yet been shown to work. Embryonic stem-cell research advocates say pursuing the proposals could divert money and efforts away from research that already has shown promise for treating spinal cord injury, diabetes, Parkinson's disease and other ailments." Learn more in Wired News.

• 12 July 2005
  "David Keith never expected to get a summons from the White House. But in September 2001, officials with the President’s Climate Change Technology Program invited him and more than two dozen other scientists to participate in a roundtable discussion called 'Response Options to Rapid or Severe Climate Change'...Keith, a physicist and economist in the chemical and petroleum engineering department at the University of Calgary, had for more than a decade been investigating strategies to curtail global warming. He and the other scientists at the meeting—including physicists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who had spent a chunk of their careers designing nuclear weapons—had come up with some ideas for 'geoengineering' Earth’s climate...Some advocate planetary air-conditioning devices such as orbiting space mirrors that deflect sunlight away from Earth, or ships that intensify cloud cover to block the sun’s rays." Learn more in Popular Science.

• 11 July 2005
  "Things have not gone well for the nuclear industry over the past quarter century or so. First came the Three Mile Island accident in America in 1979, then the disaster at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine in 1986. In Japan, Tokyo Electric Power, the world's largest private electricity company, shut its 17 nuclear reactors after it was caught falsifying safety records to hide cracks at some of its plants in 2002. And the attacks on September 11th 2001 were a sharp reminder that the risks of nuclear power generation were not only those inherent in the technology. But lately, things have brightened for the nuclear industry. In Asia, which never turned against it in the way the West did, the prospects are excellent...Now western governments are increasingly looking anew at nuclear energy." Learn more in the Economist.

• 8 July 2005
  "Police have arrested a man for using someone else's wireless Internet network in one of the first criminal cases involving this fairly common practice. Benjamin Smith III, 41, faces a pretrial hearing this month following his April arrest on charges of unauthorized access to a computer network, a third-degree felony. Police say Smith admitted using the Wi-Fi signal from the home of Richard Dinon, who had noticed Smith sitting in an SUV outside Dinon's house using a laptop computer. The practice is so new that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement doesn't even keep statistics, according to the St. Petersburg Times, which reported Smith's arrest this week. Innocuous use of other people's unsecured Wi-Fi networks is common. But experts say that illegal use often goes undetected." Learn more in USA Today.

• 7 July 2005
  "Internet users worried about spyware and adware are shunning specific Web sites, avoiding file-sharing networks, even switching browsers. Many have also stopped opening e-mail attachments without first making sure they are safe, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said in a study issued Wednesday. 'People are scaling back on some Internet activities,' said Susannah Fox, the study's main author. 'People are feeling less adventurous, less free to do whatever they want to do online.' Like no other Internet threat before it, spyware is getting people's attention, she said. 'It maybe will bring more awareness of all kinds of security issues.' Spyware generally refers to unwanted programs that often sneak onto computers without their owners' full knowledge." Learn more in Business Week.

• 6 July 2005
  "European politicians have thrown out a controversial bill that could have led to software being patented. The European Parliament voted 648 to 14 to reject the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive. The bill was reportedly rejected because, politicians said, it pleased no-one in its current form. Responding to the rejection the European Commission said it would not draw up or submit any more versions of the original proposal. Hi-tech firms supporting the directive said it was vital to protect the fruits of their research and development. Opponents said, if passed, the bill would lead to the patenting of software which would jeopardise the prospects of small firms and open source developers. The vote on Wednesday was on the more than 100 amendments made to the original bill." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 5 July 2005
  "On the site of a former hat factory in Danbury, Connecticut, a stand of genetically altered cottonwood trees sucks mercury from the contaminated soil. Across the continent in California, researchers use transgenic Indian mustard plants to soak up dangerously high selenium deposits caused by irrigation of the nation's bread basket. Still others are engineering trees to retain more carbon and thus combat global warming. The gene jockeys conducting these exotic experiments envision a future in which plants can be used as an inexpensive, safer and more effective way of disposing of pollution. Biologists for decades have been trying to exploit the genetic mechanisms that let microscopic bugs survive in polluted places where most living things die." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 4 July 2005
  "One of the fathers of the internet wants to be a daddy again. David Clark, who led the development of the internet in the 1970s, is working with the National Science Foundation on a plan for a whole new infrastructure to replace today's global network. The NSF aims to put out a request for proposals in the fall for plans and designs that could lead to what Clark called a 'clean slate' internet architecture. Those designs, Clark said, could be tested on the National LambdaRail, the nationwide optical network that researchers are using to experiment with new networking technologies and applications. Clark, who served as chief protocol architect for the government's internet development initiative in the 1980s, wants researchers to re-imagine the infrastructure that connects computer users around the world." Learn more in Wired.

• 1 July 2005
  "The U.S. government will indefinitely retain oversight of the main computers that control traffic on the Internet, ignoring calls by some countries to turn the function over to an international body, a senior official said Thursday. The announcement marked a departure from previously stated U.S. policy. Michael D. Gallagher, assistant secretary for communications and information at the Commerce Department, shied away from terming the declaration a reversal, calling it instead 'the foundation of U.S. policy going forward.' 'The signals and words and intentions and policies need to be clear so all of us benefiting in the world from the Internet and in the U.S. economy can have confidence there will be continued stewardship,' Gallagher said in an interview with The Associated Press." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 30 June 2005
  "The US foreign policy establishment has pinpointed the newest Asian threat to the world - birds. More specifically, it is the probability - some say the inevitability - of a deadly avian influenza virus spreading across the world. As the old cliche goes, it is not a question of if, but when...This week, the WHO repeated its warning that the H5N1 virus could mutate into a form which could pass easily between people and cause a global pandemic. 'Because influenza viruses are inclined to change frequently, WHO advises Vietnam and the rest of the world to remain vigilant in its influenza control efforts,' the WHO said in a statement. The WHO says that an H5N1 pandemic could kill up to 7.4 million people globally, because people lack immunity to it." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 29 June 2005
  "Smack dab in the middle of a central Pennsylvanian cornfield, in the heart of an Amish culture that typically shuns technology, sits a marvel of genetic medicine and science. The building itself, a tidy clapboard structure, was raised by hand, rope and horse in the Amish way 16 years ago. Upstairs, is the Clinic for Special Children. Downstairs houses the Amish Research Clinic. The clinic has played a role in numerous significant discoveries by expert gene hunters, from diabetes breakthroughs to unlocking some of the mysteries behind sudden infant death syndrome. The gene hunters, who come from far and wide, spend countless hours rooting through a rich genetic trove that only an insular genetic pool like the Amish can offer." Learn more in USA Today.

• 28 June 2005
  "Scientists have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans. US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years. Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research has developed a technique in which subject's veins are drained of blood and filled with an ice-cold salt solution. The animals are considered scientifically dead, as they stop breathing and have no heartbeat or brain activity. But three hours later, their blood is replaced and the zombie dogs are brought back to life with an electric shock. Plans to test the technique on humans should be realised within a year, according to the Safar Centre." Learn more in Australia's New.com.

• 27 June 2005
  "Contrary to popular opinion, empty space is not actually empty—it positively buzzes with subatomic particles. Many of these are photons, the particles of which electromagnetic radiation (light, microwaves, radio waves and so on) is composed. And most of those photons are part of a relic known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The CMB is made up of photons that began their journey 300,000 years after the Big Bang that marks the beginning of the universe. By analysing ripples imprinted on the CMB, cosmologists can see a picture of the universe as it then was. This has allowed them to infer its shape, and what sorts of matter and energy populated it, with great precision." Learn more in the Economist.

• 24 June 2005
  "Is the information technology industry a bastion of white males? A new study released Wednesday says women and most racial minorities are 'significantly underrepresented' in the IT workforce. According to the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), the percentage of women in IT declined by 18.5 percent since 1996 while some minorities are underrepresented in the industry's workforce by more than 50 percent. 'America is competing in the global economy with one hand tied behind her back,' ITAA President Harris N. Miller said in a statement released with the report. 'With competitors like China, India and Western Europe on our heels, we can ill afford to miss out on anyone with the right aptitude, skills and motivation to succeed in technical fields.'" Learn more at Internetnews.com.

• 23 June 2005
  "China has confirmed reports that Chinese poultry farmers have been using the human anti-flu drug amantadine in poultry, which can cause drug-resistant strains of the virus to develop. It says it will stop the practice. But the controls will be too late for the 'Z' strain of the H5N1 virus that has spread through southeast Asia. That strain, which has so far killed 54 people and which health officials fear might develop into a human pandemic, is already resistant to the drug. On 17 June the Washington Post revealed that amantadine has been used in China 'since the late 1990s' to control and prevent bird flu outbreaks on chicken farms. It quoted Chinese pharmaceutical executives and veterinarians who said the drug was cheap, readily available and 'widely used in the entire country' both to treat outbreaks and for routine prevention, in the same way that antibiotics are commonly used in livestock." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 22 June 2005
  "Russian space agency officials said Cosmos 1, the world's first solar sail spacecraft, failed to reach space yesterday. Agency spokesman Vyacheslav Davidenko told the Associated Press in Moscow that the Volna booster rocket that carried the spacecraft failed 83 seconds after it was launched from a Russian nuclear submarine under the Barents Sea. 'The booster's failure means that the solar sail vehicle was lost,' he said. The four-million-dollar (U.S.), joint mission was the brainchild of the Planetary Society, a nonprofit group of space enthusiasts based in Pasadena, California. Equipped with eight windmill-like Mylar sails, Cosmos 1 was designed to harness the power of solar winds—the stream of charged particles emitted by our sun." Learn more in the National Geographic.

• 21 June 2005
  "An organization associated with warnings about the potential dangers of nanotechnology wants to be the standards-setting body for the industry. The Foresight Nanotechnology Institute, a futurist organization that has raised cautionary flags about the unintended consequences of nanotechnology, and the Battelle Memorial Institute, which manages commercial scientific laboratories, have launched an effort to create a road map for nanotechnology, and it has received early support from some notable scientific organizations and companies. The Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems will essentially seek to set the agenda for the commercialization of nanotechnology, which is the science of building products out of components measuring 100 nanometers or less (a nanometer is a billionth of a meter)." Learn more at News.com.

• 20 June 2005
  "Blond and buff, Cameron Clapp is a teenage star. Dressed fashionably in a faded T-shirt, baggy shorts and sneakers, he recently strolled the crowded sidewalks of Times Square. He walked confidently, flashing the megawatt smile that brightens his Web site and various photographs in newspapers and magazines that have chronicled his story as he travels the country. Few, if any, of the onlookers had little idea that he is the poster manchild of a new generation of people who are not only embracing all types of breakthrough technologies but also incorporating them into their bodies. For people who see Cameron Clapp for the first time, he is an object of wonderment: a young man walking and talking tall on shiny robotic legs. 'I make it look easy,' said Mr. Clapp, who is 19 and still shows flickers of the cocky skater boy he was before he became what he calls 'a severe case.'" Learn more in the New York Times.

• 17 June 2005
  "If you went back in time and met your teenage parents, you could not split them up and prevent your birth - even if you wanted to, a new quantum model has stated. Researchers speculate that time travel can occur within a kind of feedback loop where backwards movement is possible, but only in a way that is "complementary" to the present. In other words, you can pop back in time and have a look around, but you cannot do anything that will alter the present you left behind. The new model, which uses the laws of quantum mechanics, gets rid of the famous paradox surrounding time travel. Although the laws of physics seem to permit temporal gymnastics, the concept is laden with uncomfortable contradictions." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 16 June 2005
  "Two Brazilian doctors and amateur art lovers believe they have uncovered a secret lesson on human anatomy hidden by Renaissance artist Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel's ceiling. Completed nearly 500 years ago, the brightly colored frescoes painted on the Vatican's famous sanctuary are considered some of the world's greatest works of art. They depict Biblical scenes such as the 'Creation of Adam' in which God reaches out to touch Adam's finger. But Gilson Barreto and Marcelo de Oliveira believe Michelangelo also scattered his detailed knowledge of internal anatomy across 34 of the ceiling's 38 panels. The way they see it, a tree trunk is not just a tree trunk, but also a bronchial tube. And a green bag in one scene is really a human heart." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 15 June 2005
  "Gene chips, DNA scanning devices that can sort millions of fragments of genetic information, are a major advance in personalizing disease diagnoses and medical treatments, based on differences in each patient's genes. The thin glass chips, widely used in research laboratories for the past five years, may be commonplace in clinical practice in the not-too-distant future. They allow scientists to analyze thousands of human genes or gene fragments at once, rather than individually, so disease causes can be identified and therapies quickly applied. Now some American scientists who have been on the cutting edge of this technology say it's time to develop international standards for the use of the tools, also known as DNA microarrays. Last month, more than 40 scientists, including some from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and several from Europe and Asia, met in Paris to brainstorm this issue." Learn more in the Washington Times.

• 14 June 2005
  "Buildings and laptops could one day be coated in plastic that generates electricity from sunlight, says an Australian organic chemist. 'The vision is plastics that coat large areas that provide quite a cheap source of renewable energy,' says Professor Andrew Holmes of the University of Melbourne's Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute. Holmes says plastic coatings that absorb light could be cheaper and easier to process than current silicon-based solar technology. 'Silicon wafers are really hard things to grow,' he says. 'You've got to assemble arrays of lots of little bits. But this stuff we could coat a football field with.' The work builds on Holmes' previous research in the UK at the University of Cambridge on light-emitting polymers, which are now used in electronic devices such as flat-screen monitors for TVs and computers." Learn more at ABC Online.

• 13 June 2005
  "Work on the possibility of cloning humans is dangerous, complicated and unethical and there will be no human clones this century, a South Korean stem cell research pioneer has said. Woo-Suk Hwang is the head of the team that cloned the first human embryo to use for research. That breakthrough sparked a flurry of international debate on the ethics of cloning research -- and how governments should be prepared to let it proceed...speaking at a conference in Seoul on Thursday, Hwang dismissed human cloning as 'unsafe science.' 'Cloning a human being is nonsense. Briefly, it is not ethical, it is not safe at all, and it's technically impossible,' he said. 'I don't think we will have any chance to meet a cloned human being within the next 100 years, at least.'" Learn more at CNN.com.

• 10 June 2005
  "The most complex object known to humanity is the human brain—and not only is it complex, but it is the seat of one of the few natural phenomena that science has no purchase on at all, namely consciousness. To try to replicate something that is so poorly understood may therefore seem like hubris. But you have to start somewhere, and IBM and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland, propose to start by replicating 'in silico', as the jargon has it, one of the brain's building blocks. In a partnership announced on June 6th, the two organisations said they would be working together to build a simulation of a structure known as a neocortical column on a type of IBM supercomputer that is currently used to study the molecular functioning of genes. If that works, they plan to use future, more powerful computers to link such simulated columns together into something that mimics a brain." Learn more in the Economist.

• 9 June 2005
  "Scientists at the University of Arizona have discovered how to use quantum mechanics to turn molecules into working transistors in the lab, a breakthrough that might one day lead to high-powered computers the size of a postage stamp. Results of the as-yet-unpublished study came together just weeks before Canadian researchers performed a similar feat using chemical means. That experiment appeared in the journal Nature last week. Together, the two studies could bring the final frontier in nanocomputing -- a single-molecule transistor -- considerably closer to reality...The smallest transistors in consumer electronics devices today measure 50 nanometers across -- a million times tinier than their postwar progenitors. (This shrinkage would be equivalent to reducing the continental United States to the size of a hot tub.) Taking transistors down another one or two orders of magnitude, to the realm of individual atoms and molecules, requires a generational leap in technology." Learn more in Wired News.

• 8 June 2005
  "It's a simple proposition: Make electricity by boiling water and letting the steam drive turbines to crank the generators. But when the heat needed to boil water comes from splitting atoms, the technology is anything but simple. Now, in its bid to make a comeback in the United States a generation after the Three Mile Island accident, the nuclear-power industry is addressing two of its major bugaboos - safety and cost - through technology. Its answer: a new generation of reactors that are simpler to operate and maintain than today's models. The move is already under way. Over the past two months, one major US utility and a separate consortium of utilities have signed agreements with the US Department of Energy (DOE) to split the cost of testing a streamlined federal program for licensing the construction and operation of new nuclear plants. The goal is to begin installing these new reactors by 2010." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 7 June 2005
  "The time-keeping device that governs all aspects of our lives, the atomic clock, is celebrating its 50th year. The first atomic clock, which uses the resonance frequencies of atoms to keep extremely precise time, was born at the UK's National Physical Laboratory. Atomic clocks form the standard for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which governs legal time-keeping globally. The clocks are vital for rafts of technologies, such as global satellite navigation, and TV signal timings. Precise and accurate time-keeping is also essential for other synchronised events, such as the distribution and management of electricity, and financial transactions across the globe. Even London's Big Ben relies on atomic clocks to keep it right." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 6 June 2005
  "English rules the Internet, which can be a frustrating thing for the world's 1.3 billion Chinese and 322 million Spanish-speakers. They outnumber Anglophones. Even online, two-thirds of users speak something other than English at home.So when someone promises a smoother and easier translation program, people around the world tend to perk up their ears. It's a step closer to a truly 'worldwide' Web where every page would be available for everyone to read in his or her own language. The latest step comes later this month when the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an arm of the United States government, announces results of its tests of several machine-translation systems. The agency is expected to give top honors, not to the linguistic-savvy programs at universities and elsewhere, but to a newcomer: Internet search company Google." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 3 June 2005
  "Since researchers first mixed together genes from two species more than a quarter century ago, biotechnology companies have promised to revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry — and even disrupt centuries of farming practices. Despite that promise — and some very significant breakthroughs in treating cancer, diabetes and other widespread and deadly diseases — the industry's combined losses continued to mount in 2004. The biotechnology industry lost a combined $6.4 billion last year, according to a new report from Ernst & Young. The industry's total accrued loss since its birth in Silicon Valley in the mid-1970s is more than $45 billion." Learn more in USA Today.

• 2 June 2005
  "Researchers from Stanford University and Cornell University have put together a projector-camera system that can pull off a classic magic trick: it can read a playing card that is facing away from the camera. The dual-photography system gains information from a subject by analyzing the way projected patterns of light bounce off it. The system can show a scene from the point of view of the projector as well as that of the camera. It could eventually be used to quickly add lighting effects in movie scenes, including the ability to realistically integrate actors who are shot separately and computer graphics into previously shot scenes...The ultimate goal of this area of imaging research is photorealistic virtual reality -- the visual component of the Star Trek holodeck." Learn more in Technology

• 1 June 2005
  "If you're worried that nanotechnology is going to contaminate the Earth and needs to be stopped before it destroys the human species, well ... heh-heh ... too late! Last week, I stopped by the NanoBusiness 2005 conference just off Wall Street. The overarching theme: Nanotech isn't just a lab experiment anymore. It's spreading fast and in some surprising ways. For that matter, you'll probably slather nanotech all over your face this summer. It's in sunscreens and sun-blocking lotions. It's in quick-drying paint. It might be in your pants. Perhaps most dazzling of all, nanotechnology can be used to manufacture diamonds that are all but indistinguishable from mined diamonds — a profound development that could eventually cut into traditional diamond sales the way Tylenol pushed aside aspirin." Learn more in USA Today.

• 31 May 2005
  "The Voyager I spacecraft has moved into the solar system's final frontier, a vast area where the sun's influence gives way to interstellar space, NASA's Web site reports. 'Voyager has entered the final lap on its race to the edge of interstellar space, as it begins exploring the solar system's final frontier,' said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena...At 8.7 billion miles from the sun, Voyager I has entered the heliosheath, a region beyond termination shock -- the critical boundary that marks the transition from the solar system into interstellar space." Star Trek fans will love this report at CNN.com.

• 30 May 2005
  "The Voyager I spacecraft has moved into the solar system's final frontier, a vast area where the sun's influence gives way to interstellar space, NASA's Web site reports. 'Voyager has entered the final lap on its race to the edge of interstellar space, as it begins exploring the solar system's final frontier,' said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena...At 8.7 billion miles from the sun, Voyager I has entered the heliosheath, a region beyond termination shock -- the critical boundary that marks the transition from the solar system into interstellar space." Star Trek fans will love this report at CNN.com.

• 27 May 2005
  "By the middle of the 21st century it will be possible to download your brain to a supercomputer, according to a leading thinker on the future. Ian Pearson, head of British Telecom's futurology unit, told the UK's Observer newspaper that the rapid advances in computing power would make cyber-immortality a reality within 50 years. Pearson said the launch last week of Sony's PlayStation 3, a machine 35 times more powerful than the model it replaced, was a sign of things to come. 'The new PlayStation is one percent as powerful as the human brain," Pearson told the Observer. "It is into supercomputer status compared to 10 years ago. PlayStation 5 will probably be as powerful as the human brain.' Pearson said that brain-downloading technology would initially be the preserve of the rich, but would become more available over subsequent decades." Learn more in CNN.com.

• 26 May 2005
  "The mathematical formulae that describe people’s movement through global air travel could be harnessed to control the spread of deadly diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) or influenza, researchers say. Luís Amaral and colleagues at Northwestern University in Illinois, US, analysed publicly available data on available flights between global airports and used the information to construct a network of 27,051 links. They found that global air travel follows a simple but skewed mathematical rule, with important hubs not necessarily in the most relevant geographical locations. And the researchers say the discovery could help health experts control the spread of deadly diseases, which can be rapidly carried to new locations via air travellers. There is evidence to suggest that air travel may play a major role in future disease pandemics. The spread of SARS, in March 2003, has been linked to air travel." Learn more at The New Scientist.

• 25 May 2005
  "A pioneering commercial wave power plant, producing clean and renewable energy, is to go on line off Portugal in 2006, after a contract was signed this week, project partners announced Friday. The companies claimed the so-called 'wave farm' will be the world's first such commercial operation. The power generators, like giant, orange sausages floating on water, will use wave motion to produce electricity by pumping high-pressure fluids to motors, Norsk Hydro AS said. The Norwegian energy company is a major backer of the project. The generators were developed by Ocean Power Delivery, based in Edinburgh, Scotland, which signed an euro8 million (U.S. $6.25 million) contract with a Portuguese consortium to build three Pelamis P-750 wave power generators next year." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 24 May 2005
  "A New Zealand patient has become the first to be treated for heart failure with a new turbocharger pumping aid. The implant, called a C-pulse, consists of a balloon that inflates after each heart beat to squeeze the blood in the main blood vessel that exits the heart. The battery-powered device deflates again and the cycle continues, boosting blood flow around the body. The 56-year-old man fitted with the turbocharger earlier this month is doing well, said New Scientist. The team from Auckland City Hospital have approval to operate on five more patients with moderate heart failure as part of a pilot study. After three months, they will use questionnaires to check whether the treatment has improved the patients' quality of life and use ultrasound scans to monitor whether the device has improved their ailing hearts." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 23 May 2005
  "It's a breeze: Wind has plenty of potential energy to exceed worldwide demand for electricity, a study finds. If only 20% of the Earth's 'wind-power potential' were tapped, humanity could meet all of its electricity demand seven times over, according to a new study. Two researchers at Stanford University's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering set out to provide the first hard estimate of the number of sites with commercially exploitable wind flows. The team used data from more than 8,000 weather stations and balloon-sounding sites around the world to estimate the number of places that could host stands of turbines 260 feet tall and generate enough electricity to be cost-effective. At least 13% of the sites had annual average wind speeds faster than 15 miles per hour at the height of a turbine blade's hub — enough to make a commercial go of wind power." Learn more in USA Today.

• 20 May 2005
  "South Korean scientists say they have made stem cells tailored to match the individual for the first time. Each of the 11 new stem cell lines that they made were created by taking genetic material from the patient and putting it into a donated egg. The resultant cells were a perfect match for the individual and could mean treatments for diseases like diabetes without problems of rejection. The study, published in Science, has been hailed as a major advance. Meanwhile, UK scientists at Newcastle University announced they had successfully produced a cloned embryo using donated eggs and genetic material from stem cells. Although a long way behind the Korean research, it was the first time a human cloned embryo had been created in Britain. Critics said these 'cloning' techniques are unethical." Learn more in the BBC.com.

• 19 May 2005
  "The spate of human bird flu cases in Vietnam this year suggests the deadly virus may be mutating in ways that are making it more capable of being passed between humans, according to a World Health Organisation report. The finding points to the greatest fear of health experts that the H5N1 virus could unleash a pandemic and kill millions around the globe if ever it gained the ability to be transmitted among humans efficiently. While investigators could not prove human-to-human transmission had occurred, the report said that 'the pattern of disease appeared to have changed in a manner consistent with this possibility'. 'They (findings) demonstrate that the viruses are continuing to evolve and pose a continuing and potentially growing pandemic threat,' the report said." Learn more in Reuters News.

• 18 May 2005
  "The electronic metal gates closed ominously behind us as we entered the exotic world of the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species, just outside New Orleans. Our small group of journalists was escorted into a place reminiscent of the film Jurassic Park in more ways than one. The movie is based on the fantasy of bringing rampaging dinosaurs back to life through samples of ancient DNA preserved in amber. The biggest carnivore they have cloned from DNA so far here at the centre is an African wildcat; the science is very real, and it works. Driving through the dense and lush forest, it wouldn't have been too surprising if a Tyrannosaurus had appeared out of the steamy undergrowth. After a few minutes, we came upon the cages that house some of the cats that put the centre at the forefront of animal cloning." Learn more in the BBC.com.

• 17 May 2005
  "A California company has figured out how to use two simple materials -- water and salt -- to create a solution that wipes out single-celled organisms, and which appears to speed healing of burns, wounds and diabetic ulcers. The solution looks, smells and tastes like water, but carries an ion imbalance that makes short work of bacteria, viruses and even hard-to-kill spores. Developed by Oculus Innovative Sciences in Petaluma, the super-oxygenated water is claimed to be as effective a disinfectant as chlorine bleach, but is harmless to people, animals and plants. If accidentally ingested by a child, the likely impact is a bad case of clean teeth. Oculus said the solution, called Microcyn, may prove effective in the fight against superbugs, crossover viruses like bird flu and Ebola, and bioterrorism threats such as anthrax." Learn more in Wired News.

• 16 May 2005
  "Scientists are fond of running the evolutionary clock backward, using DNA analysis and the fossil record to figure out when our ancestors stood erect and split off from the rest of the primate evolutionary tree. But the clock is running forward as well. So where are humans headed? Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins says it's the question he's most often asked, and 'a question that any prudent evolutionist will evade.' But the question is being raised even more frequently as researchers study our past and contemplate our future. Paleontologists say that anatomically modern humans may have at one time shared the Earth with as many as three other closely related types — Neanderthals, Homo erectus and the dwarf hominids whose remains were discovered last year in Indonesia. Does evolutionary theory allow for circumstances in which 'spin-off' human species could develop again?" Learn more at MSNBC.com.

• 13 May 2005
  "It's spring, the season when American farmers return to their fields with trucks, tractors, cultivators, and plows. Some of their machinery has seen better days, but at least one part of their operations is the very latest high tech: their seed. In the United States, a whopping 85 percent of the soybeans, three-fourths of the cotton, and nearly half of the corn planted last year were super varieties whose genes have been manipulated in a laboratory. These and nearly a dozen other genetically modified (GM) crops - from papaya and potatoes to squash, sugar beets, tobacco, and tomatoes - have been altered by scientists to produce higher yields or to better resist herbicides, pests, or drought. Most Americans consume these GM foods without a second thought - or a label telling of the GM content. That's because the US government does not consider these changed crops to be different enough from their conventional counterparts to warrant special labeling...Instead of pushing for nationwide labeling, opponents have moved to the state and local levels." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 12 May 2005
  "Scientists have created a robot that can replicate itself in minutes. The team behind the machine says the experiment shows that self- reproduction is not unique to living organisms The researchers add that the ability could be harnessed to drive major advances in nanotechnology, the science of the very small, and may even lead to space colonization by robots. Developed by researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, the machine was constructed from cube-shaped robotic units (modules) that functioned independently. A four-module robot could assemble an exact replica of itself in just two and a half minutes. Writing for tomorrow's issue of the science journal Nature, the researchers say the plastic robotic cubes each contained a microprocessor, a motor, and electromagnets. The cubes were split diagonally into two halves, allowing the cubes to swivel to change position or move objects." Learn more in the National Geographic.

• 11 May 2005
  "While no corner of earth remains uncharted, there are still millions of species that have yet to be discovered and documented. The quest to complete a comprehensive directory of all life on earth goes on. It's a good job monkeys don't understand us, else you'd fear for the newly discovered Callicebus aureipalatii...This latest species had the dubious fate of being discovered in an era of strident global capitalism - hence its name, the result of a charity auction eventually won by the online gambling emporium GoldenPalace.com. Novelty names aside, though, it's surprising that on a planet which has been so comprehensively researched, circumnavigated and trampled over there are still new sorts of primate which have evaded human detection. While Mother Nature wrestles with the effects of industrialisation, prompting fears about extinction rates, there are still huge gaps in our knowledge about the natural world that surrounds us." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 10 May 2005
  "In a challenge to conventional wisdom, scientists have found that buckyballs dissolve in water and could have a negative impact on soil bacteria. The findings raise new questions about how the nanoparticles might behave in the environment and how they should be regulated, according to a report scheduled to appear in the June 1 print issue of the American Chemical Society's peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology. ACS is the world's largest scientific society. A buckyball is a soccer ball-shaped molecule made up of 60 carbon atoms. Also known as fullerenes, buckyballs have recently been touted for their potential applications in everything from drug delivery to energy transmission. Yet even as industrial-scale production of buckyballs approaches reality, little is known about how these nano-scale particles will impact the natural environment." Learn more in EV World.

• 9 May 2005
  "The human brain is mysterious -- and, in a way, that is a good thing. The less that is known about how the brain works, the more secure the zone of privacy that surrounds the self. But that zone seems to be shrinking. A couple of weeks ago, two scientists revealed that they had found a way to peer directly into your brain and tell what you are looking at, even when you yourself are not yet aware of what you have seen. So much for the comforting notion that each of us has privileged access to his own mind. Opportunities for observing the human mental circuitry in action have, until recent times, been almost nonexistent, mainly because of a lack of live volunteers willing to sacrifice their brains to science...Today scientists are able to get some idea of what's going on in the mind by using brain scanners." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 6 May 2005
  "The efforts of industrialised nations to cut smog pollution has had a bizarre side-effect - accelerating global warming. New data show that after years of getting smoggier, our skies have become clearer since about 1990. And one effect has been to allow more solar radiation to reach the surface of the Earth. The phenomenon known as 'global dimming' has gone into reverse, according to research by Martin Wild at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich, Switzerland, and been replaced by 'global brightening'. 'There is no longer a dimming to counteract the greenhouse effect,' he told New Scientist...The main cause of the global brightening, says Wild, is the clean-up of air pollution, especially in Europe and the former Soviet Union, where industrial decline has also played a role." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 5 May 2005
  "Computer scientists in the US have developed a robot that could help blind people to shop or find their way around large buildings. It uses radio frequency identification tags to locate items and a laser range finder to avoid collisions. It was created by professor Vladimir Kulyukin at Utah State University and shop floor trials have already begun. Prof Kulyukin and his colleagues are in negotiations with a large supermarket chain to conduct more extensive trials. 'We refer to it as a robotic shopping assistant,' he told the BBC News website. The idea came to Prof Kulyukin after several visually impaired people told him that they had difficulty shopping independently. The shopping robot has been tried out at a local grocery store - Lees Marketplace - in Logan, Utah." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 4 May 2005
  "It's an old story with a new twist. A young marine is killed in the line of duty and his parents request all his belongings, including his correspondence - in this case, his e-mail. The Internet company refuses to give out the marine's password, saying that would violate its privacy rules. The parents go to court, causing a storm of discussion on the Net and in the media. This small episode involving Yahoo! and the parents of US marine Justin Ellsworth raises new and tricky questions about the nature of e-mail. Should it be treated as paper correspondence or as something new? And how much access should relatives have to a record of the thoughts of a loved one who has passed away, especially ones that can be as extensive, intimate, - and even embarrassing - as in e-mail?" Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 3 May 2005
  "Before powerful antiviral medicines became available, Kai Brothers lost his partner and many friends to AIDS. Thinking he was next, he quit his job, emptied his 401(k) and waited to die. Nothing happened. It has been 16 years since Mr. Brothers learned he was H.I.V. positive. Since then, he has never taken AIDS drugs or had any illnesses associated with the disease. Once a month Mr. Brothers visits the laboratory of Dr. Jay Levy, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who is director of the university's laboratory for tumor and AIDS virus research. Since the epidemic began in 1981, Dr. Levy has been trying to understand why Mr. Brothers and others who are H.I.V. positive can remain medicine-free yet fit for decades, while the average person with H.I.V. progresses to AIDS within 10 years, if untreated. An answer to that question could help in the development of a vaccine." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 2 May 2005
  "On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason Chamberlain looks over a flock of about 50 smelly sheep, many of them possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs. The University of Nevada-Reno researcher talks matter-of-factly about his plans to euthanize one of the pregnant sheep in a nearby lab. He can't wait to examine the effects of the human cells he had injected into the fetus' brain about two months ago. 'It's mice on a large scale,' Chamberlain says with a shrug. As strange as his work may sound, it falls firmly within the new ethics guidelines the influential National Academies issued this past week for stem cell research. In fact, the Academies' report endorses research that co-mingles human and animal tissue as vital to ensuring that experimental drugs and new tissue replacement therapies are safe for people." Learn more at CNN.com.

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