Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.

The DNA sequence is based on the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium which the team pared down to the bare essentials needed to support life, removing a fifth of its genetic make-up. The wholly synthetically reconstructed chromosome, which the team have christened Mycoplasma laboratorium, has been watermarked with inks for easy recognition.

It is then transplanted into a living bacterial cell and in the final stage of the process it is expected to take control of the cell and in effect become a new life form. The team of scientists has already successfully transplanted the genome of one type of bacterium into the cell of another, effectively changing the cell’s species. Mr Venter said he was “100% confident” the same technique would work for the artificially created chromosome.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/oct/06/genetics.climatechange
Source: Engadget

In the 40 years that humans have been traveling into space, the suits they wear have changed very little. The bulky, gas-pressurized outfits give astronauts a bubble of protection, but their significant mass and the pressure itself severely limit mobility.

Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT, wants to change that.

Newman’s prototype suit is a revolutionary departure from the traditional model. Instead of using gas pressurization, which exerts a force on the astronaut’s body to protect it from the vacuum of space, the suit relies on mechanical counter-pressure, which involves wrapping tight layers of material around the body. The trick is to make a suit that is skintight but stretches with the body, allowing freedom of movement.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/biosuit-0716.html
Source: http://www.slashdot.org

Scientists have created the world’s first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.

The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.

Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep’s foetus.

He has already created a sheep liver which has a large proportion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep.

The process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor’s bone marrow and injecting them into the peritoneum of a sheep’s foetus. When the lamb is born, two months later, it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that are partly human and available for transplant.

Now scientists create a sheep that’s 15% human

Tipster Matt Sparks informs us of a new patent that...well here read:

“Sticking to an exercise regime is always easier if there’s some sort of reward or punishment involved. Well, Sony Ericsson reckons that a phone or PDA could provide just the right incentive.

A wireless device could have a pedometer that set to a target - say 10,000 steps in a week. If the owner hits the target the device then downloads a ring tone, a music track or video clip by way of reward. Or, if the owner slacks off and misses the target, the device malevolently deletes a file from its memory.”

Hmmm...Sony’s new logo could be the carrot and stick.

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn11308?DCMP=Matt_Sparkes&nsref=cell-treat

See...there is hope for those early arrives…

From the article:

“These large scale ‘blast’ waves occur infrequently, however, are very powerful. They quickly propagate in a matter of minutes covering the whole Sun, sweeping away filamentary material”, said Dr. K. S. Balasubramaniam. “It is unusual to see such powerful waves encompassing the whole sun from ground based observatories. Its significance comes from the fact that these waves are occurring near solar minimum, when intense activity is yet to pick up.”

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/061208_solar_tsunami.html

With professors uploading their daily lectures as podcasts, universities issuing free devices to freshmen, have iPod’s have evolved from the educator’s enemy to one of the strongest tools in modern academia? Organizations like iPREPpress would like to think so.

With students carrying these devices to and from class, it makes sense to use them as educational tools. Dozens of universities are embracing professor podcasts and Stanford is even using iTunes to take lectures globally.

"iPREPpress was founded with the purpose of converting existing educational materials to iPod format. Students can visit the site and download SparkNotes, study charts, dictionaries, encyclopedias and other beneficial resources. They expect to have over 30 publishers on board by December 2006.”

Looks like a great idea and will no doubt entrench Apple even deeper into areas other than pop culture. Too bad iPREPpress only offers this for the iPod and not PlaysForSure devices. 

Anandtech found an interesting article on a concept SUV called the Terranaut from Nissan.

"Touch pads used to open the doors electrically are covered with a tactile silicon finish while the seats, which all feature air vents in the base and backrests feature ‘breathing’ fabrics. Colours chosen mix practical laboratory greys with warm beige and brown shades to bring a human touch to what is essentially a scientific environment.

Built to house three operators - a pilot, co-pilot and lab technician/scientist - Terranaut has enough refrigerated storage space to house food, water and other provisions for stays of upwards of a week out in the field. Lightweight tents, sleeping bags built for extreme conditions and simple cooking facilities are carried in storage compartments in the doors.”

More: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=817

About the size of a camcorder and weighing less than 16 ounces, the Celestron SkyScout utilizes a consumer-friendly “point and shoot” GPS technology that enables stargazers to instantly identify and/or locate over 6,000 celestial objects in the sky.  Yeah I think even I can do that. With a press of a button you can listen to commentary on the object and its history told by a real life star...ok maybe not an actual star.

The SkyScout also has a “locate” feature that allows you to select an object they wish to view (i.e. Uranus...hint: you point it at the sky) and the SkyScout, using illuminated arrows in the viewfinder, will point the user to the object.  A totally unique, one-of-a-kind product, SkyScout utilizes patented technology that combines data from sensors measuring both the magnetic and gravitational fields of the Earth, along with internal GPS and a substantial celestial database to dramatically improve how people learn about astronomy, making it much easier and more entertaining.

Unveiled at the 2006 International Consumer Electronics Show, yes we missed it while we were there, in January, Celestron’s SkyScout has a suggested retail price of $399.00 and will be available as a personal planetarium for stargazers, families, students and astronomers alike in March 2006.  Visit http://www.celestron.com/skyscout for more information on availability and for a list of retailers taking pre-orders.

Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three pigs that glow in the dark. They claim that while other researchers have bred partly fluorescent pigs, theirs are the only pigs in the world which are green through and through. The pigs are transgenic, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo.

The researchers hope the pigs will boost the island’s stem cell research, as well as helping with the study of human disease.

In daylight the researchers say the pigs’ eyes, teeth and trotters look green. Their skin has a greenish tinge. In the dark, shine a blue light on them and they glow torch-light bright.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4605202.stm

In a new project called Stardust@home, University of California, Berkeley, researchers will invite Internet users to help them search for a few dozen submicroscopic grains of interstellar dust captured by NASA’s Stardust spacecraft and due to return to Earth in January 2006.

Though Stardust’s main mission was to capture dust from the tail of comet Wild 2 - dust dating from the origins of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago - it also captured a sprinkling of dust from distant stars, perhaps created in supernova explosions less than 10 million years ago.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/01/10_dust.shtml
Source: http://science.slashdot.org/science/06/01/11/069248.shtml

A new robot can recognize the difference between a mirror image of itself and another robot that looks just like it.

This so-called mirror image cognition is based on artificial nerve cell groups built into the robot’s computer brain that give it the ability to recognize itself and acknowledge others.

The ground-breaking technology could eventually lead to robots able to express emotions.

Under development by Junichi Takeno and a team of researchers at Meiji University in Japan, the robot represents a big step toward developing self-aware robots and in understanding and modeling human self-consciousness.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20051219/awarerobot_tec.html

A new method of locomotion has recently been invented that may prove useful in many scales of operation. While the title suggests a very narrow topic, there are in fact many interesting variations that arose during the development of this patent pending device. The application of which include robots, micro machines, novelty toys, and others.

The first prototype consisted of a car with 4 square wheels, in the general configuration of a typical car, with all 4 wheels mechanically connected together so they must all turn in unison. Furthermore, the rotational orientation of the wheels are sequentially off-set from one wheel to the next by 22.5° (¼ of 90°), moving around the vehicle in a CW or CCW direction as viewed from above.

The main driving force for the table top prototype is produced by gravity pulling downward. Other forces that could hold the car against a surface, and provide the moving force necessary to increment the car along, include aerodynamic, hydrodynamic, magnetic, electromagnetic, and electrostatic. Such forces could be independent of the car mass, and could thus propel the vehicle with much greater force and velocity. In some instances, these forces could provide their own means to move from wheel to wheel, eliminating the central motor used in the prototype.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/12/prweb316686.htm
Source: http://www.slashdot.com

ASIMO, Honda’s advanced humanoid robot, will make its first-ever appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) January 5-8 in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s North Hall in the American Honda Booth #6406.

Show-goers will have an hourly opportunity to see ASIMO conduct a live demonstration of its unique technological capabilities on stage in the Honda booth. The demonstration will include functionality never before exhibited in the United States, including balancing on a tilting floor and navigating a slope. The demonstration will also include walking forward and backward, kicking a soccer ball, and climbing and descending a flight of stairs.

PDAToday will be there and with any luck i will try to grab some video to post of the ASIMO.

Looks like the dark matter guys may be having a helping of crow. But that’s what science is all about, theories and discoveries and sometimes a helping of crow. Slashdot reports that The CERN newsletter reveals a paper by scientists at the University of Victory have been able to explain why the apparent appearance of Dark Matter can be explained with out actually being dark matter just by properly using...wait for it...General relativity!

Hmmm, does this mean a long line at the soup kitchen for cosmologists and particle physicists who specialized in dark matter? More importantly how does this bode for countless episodes of Star Trek and other SciFi series that relied on existence of dark matter, oh wait I keep forgetting that the Fi in SciFi means fiction.

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0507619

The Korea Advanced Intelligent Robot Association (KAIRA) has developed a robot that teaches English to elementary students has been deployed in a pilot program in Seoul Korea.

Over the next three months youngsters will receive instruction from their robotic teachers by reading sentences back in English to the robot who will listen and make pronunciation corrections to their English. Just so as they don’t learn the terrible secret of time and space.

The Korean Ministry of Information and Communication has invested more than 3 billion won in research and development. The price of a robot will be between $700 and $800. Affordable according to KAIRA, who claims that future software developments will result in robots that will be able to teach adults.

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