Synthetic DNA assembly.

Scientists have discovered a more efficient way of building a synthetic genome that could one day enable them to create artificial life.

Get a life - any life.

Nanoscale Fibre Optics

"Scientists have created a tiny cable -- much thinner than a human hair -- through which they can transmit visible light, potentially paving the way for improvements in solar energy, computing and medicine.

It could lend itself to miniature electrical circuitry and microscopic light-based switching devices for optical computing. It also could have medical applications such as retinal implants for people with the eye disease macular degeneration or detecting single molecules of pathogens in the body......

"You can envision making chips that can move light around -- basically convey information at the speed of light rather than using electronics. So it's optics for the manipulation of information rather than electronics."

Mmmm...speed of light.

Can you see me now ?

"For the first time ever, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have developed a material with a negative refractive index for visible light.

Ames Laboratory senior physicist Costas Soukoulis, working with colleagues in Karlsruhe, Germany, designed a silver-based, mesh-like material that marks the latest advance in the rapidly evolving field of metamaterials, materials that could lead to a wide range of new applications as varied as ultrahigh-resolution imaging systems and cloaking devices."

Seeing really isn't believing after all.

Cancer Fighter Patented

A group of researchers claim that they are patenting a possible cure for cancer involving nothing more than sugar and short-chain fatty acid combination.

The Johns Hopkins researchers cautioned that their double-punch molecule, described in the December issue of the journal Chemistry & Biology, has not yet been tested on animals or humans.

"For a long time, cancer researchers did not pay much attention to the use of sugars in fighting cancer," Department of Biomedical Engineering postdoctoral fellow said. "But we found that when the right sugar is matched with the right chemical partner, it can deliver a powerful double-whammy against cancer cells."

That's that then....next..Flying Cars please.

Nano Tools

By manipulating carbon nanotubes inside scanning electron microscopes, 21st-century nanosmiths have begun crafting a suite of research tools, including nanotweezers, nanobearings and nano-oscillators.

To design the nanoknife, the NIST and CU scientists welded a carbon nanotube between two electrochemically sharpened tungsten needles.
In the resulting prototype, the nanotube stretches between two ends of a tungsten wire loop.

For those hard to get places.

Can You See Me Now ?

A consortium of 11 European countries have approved 57 million euros (74.1 million dollars) to fund the design of what will be the world's greatest optical telescope.

The so-called Europe Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) is budgeted at between 800 million and a billion euros (1.04-1.3 billion dollars).

A design approved by more than 250 ESO astronomers at a four-day meeting in Marseille, southern France, at the start of the month calls for an optical/infrared telescope with a 42-metre (136.5-feet) -diameter composite mirror, the largest in the world. The mirror will comprise 906 hexagonal segments, each 1.45 metres (4.7 feet) in size. Their light will be channelled to an "adaptive optics" system, chiefly comprising a smaller mirror whose shape can be distorted by tiny actuators and helps to correct for image fuzziness that occurs when light passes through Earth's atmosphere.

If all goes well, the E-ELT will start operations in 2018, and will be more than 100 times more sensitive than the present-day largest optical telescopes, led by the 10-metre (32.5-feet) Keck telescope in Hawaii.

It could hugely advance knowledge of planets around other stars, the earliest moments of the Universe, "super-massive" black holes and enigmatic phenomena called dark energy and dark matter.

The initial design sketched for the telescope was an OWL ("OverWhelmingly Large") design with a 100-metre (325-feet) mirror. But this was scaled back in 2005 because it was too costly and too complex to build on ESO's budget timescale.

My wish list now to include Inferometry Array of Space based OWLS.

Are You Staring At Me ?

"Two Swiss scientists said they had been able to identify a part of the brain that may be responsible for the "out-of-body" experiences of patients who came close to death.

Electrical stimulation of a key area of the brain near the temple upset the mind's perception of the body..

The brain generates an image of the body in the mind. But this is an external image as if the body were projected under, facing or behind the person. "In the first two instances, the patients still recognises their own image; in the latter, however, they sense another, sombre and menacing, presence."

I hate it when that happens.

ITER - Sign me Up.

"The EU and six nations have signed a treaty launching a multibillion-dollar experimental nuclear fusion research project, aimed at emulating the power of the sun to provide limitless, clean energy.

The facility is to be built in Cadarache, in southern France, over a decade starting 2008.

The release of energy from a fusion reaction is 10 million times greater than from a typical chemical reaction, such as burning a fossil fuel.

'.......we will be able to derive as much energy from a litre of seawater as from a litre of petrol or a kilo of coal.'"

Pentagon launches Operation "Hands Around The Oceans".

100mw Sino Solar

"China, seeking to ease its dependence on coal to fuel its booming economy, said on Tuesday it will build the world's largest solar power station in the poor but sunny northwestern province of Gansu.

China has also stepped up investment in energy projects abroad and nuclear power."

Shine on.

Forking Futures

"As part of their 50th anniversary celebrations NewScientist asked over 70 of the world's most brilliant scientists:

What will be the biggest breakthrough of the next 50 years?"

Navigate by Author or topic.

One things for sure, the future ain't what it used to be.

Zero-G Liquid Play (I mean..Experiments)

If like me you've been wondering what the unbounded gravity dynamics of a heterogenous nucleation might be, well here you go.

Un-Blind Mice

"British and American scientists have restored vision in blind mice by transplanting light-sensitive cells into their eyes in a breakthrough that could lead to new treatments of human eye diseases.

...instead of using stem cells.....for the first time .. it is possible to transplant photoreceptors.

Could also give .. new insights into repairing damage to other parts of the central nervous system."

Prepare for the inevitable "Rights of the photoreceptor precursor cell." debate.

Human/animal embryo research ?...

Mommy..How did you and Daddy meet ?

Brain stimulation boosts memory..

Plug In, Sleep, Learn.....I can do that.