The military wants to turn odour recognition into a science to help fight terror. The Unique Signature Detection Project
, is designed to help identify terrorists based on scents they secrete in their sweat, tears, urine and other bodily fluids — via digg
A team of scientists and surgeons at the Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital have developed a method of growing new organs within a patient’s body. The cells have been grown in a plastic chamber under the patients’ skin
Ricoh is pioneering the use of plant-based plastics at its global headquarters in Japan
Recent research, shows that at the lowest temperature point at which the change of state occurs — called the Quantum Critical Point — the Han purple pigment actually loses a dimension: it goes from 3D to 2D — via digg
A meteor which crashed into Antarctica probably caused the biggest mass extinction in the Earth’s history and likely spawned the Australian continent, scientists say
Computer games in the hands of the elderly are shaping up as the latest weapons in the war against Alzheimer’s
The technology that helped make black-light posters and concert T-shirts a cultural mainstay is now being used to make fuel cells, chip packages and PC components
Scientists have discovered that Caribbean spiny lobsters, a social animal, do their best to stay the hell away from others that are sick. Biologist Mark Butler of Old Dominion University and his colleagues noticed that while healthy spiny lobsters spend their days in large groups, sick animals are left alone — via Boing Boing
A plan for a cloaking device has been unveiled. The design is pioneered by Professor Sir John Pendry’s team of scientists from the US and Britain. Proof of the ability of his invention could be ready in just 18 months time using radar testing. The method revolves around certain materials making light flow
around the given object like water
Water behaving like a thin liquid or a dense vapor has been found 2,990 metres under the sea. At 298 bar and 407°C, seawater becomes a supercritical fluid that can diffuse diffuse through solids like a gas, yet dissolve things like a liquid
Scientists are recreating the human body on a microchip — using clumps of cells from different organs linked by fluid-filled channels — to reduce the amount of animal testing for drugs. The human-on-a-chip
mimics the body’s physiology on a miniature scale, including how each organ reacts to drugs and other chemicals
In a landmark development
researchers have created an artificial penis that has allowed rabbits with damaged penises to successfully mate. The urologists say that the procedure might one day help treat men with severe erectile dysfunction
The Department of Energy has filed a patent for hydrogen fuel balls. The proposed glass microspheres would each be a few millionths of a metre (microns) wide with a hollow centre containing specks of palladium. The walls of each sphere would also have pores just a few ten-billionths of a metre in diameter. They are supposedly safe and small enough to be pumped into a fuel tank in the same manner as petrol
Researchers at Stanford have developed a robot that mimics the extraordinary climbing skills of the Gecko. These creatures can climb sheer surfaces thanks to the intermolecular forces exerted by millions of tiny hairs their feet, called setae. The robot, Stickybot, has polymer pads on its feed with synthetic setae
Danish researchers found a simple way to make curiously shaped air holes in a bucket of water. Simply rig the bucket to have a spinning plate at the bottom, and depending on the speed, you can get an ellipse, three-sided star, square, pentagon, or hexagon. The effect may help explain such shapes seen in atmospheric disturbances on Earth and other planets — via Slashdot
Believing that god created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed. He has also said that the idea of papal infallibility had been a PR disaster
. What it actually meant was that, on matters of faith, followers should accept somebody has got to be the boss, the final authority
. It’s not like he has a magic power, that God whispers the truth in his ear,
he said — via Warren Ellis
Advances by CSIRO in material sciences are creating second skin technology that can protect the body against wounds and major traumas
After more than a century in business, it would be understandable for a company to run out of fresh ideas. But 3M, the manufacturing conglomerate, is still at it, at age 104. The manufacturing conglomerate — an abrasives maker that broke out by inventing masking tape in 1925 — is introducing new products as if it were a startup
The UMass Lowell research group has joined groups from five other institutions and secured funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to pursue the possibilities of causing a limb to re-grow in an adult mammal. One form of newt, the Eastern or red-spotted newt‚Äîcapable of limb regeneration, will be studied — via digg
Usually the only alcohol-powered muscles are the ones in barroom brawls, but one scientist is adding alcohol to artificial muscles to power robots and more. Scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas have developed artificial muscles
— science’s best attempt at mimicking natural muscles. But they’re not made with the hydraulics or gears that power most of today’s big, strong machines. These muscles are made of an elastic metal called shape memory wire
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