GenomeWeb Daily News

Team Led By UCSC’s Haussler to Reconstruct Whole Genome of Distant Mammalian Ancestor
By Bernadette Toner, BioInform editor

COLD SPRING HARBOR, NY, Oct. 31 (GenomeWeb News) - It's technically possible to computationally reconstruct the genome of the ancestor of all placental mammals, according to David Haussler of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who is spearheading a collaborative effort to deliver the assembly of such a genome to the research community.

Haussler, a professor of biomolecular engineering at UCSC, said that an effort to "reconstruct the evolutionary history of each base in the human genome" from the time of the so-called Boreoeutherian ancestor, which lived around 75 million years ago, is "the grand challenge of human molecular evolution."
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I see a lab in a remote location. I see scientists creating the ancient DNA sequences. I see artificial wombs. I see a theme park with protobeings living as they must have. I see things running amok. Oh wait, it's been done.

Remote Control Device 'Controls' Humans - Yahoo! News

Remote Control Device 'Controls' Humans - Yahoo! News: "ATSUGI, Japan - We wield remote controls to turn things on and off, make them advance, make them halt. Ground-bound pilots use remotes to fly drone airplanes, soldiers to maneuver battlefield robots.
But manipulating humans?

Prepare to be remotely controlled. I was.

Just imagine being rendered the rough equivalent of a radio-controlled toy car.

Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., Japans top telephone company, says it is developing the technology to perhaps make video games more realistic. But more sinister applications also come to mind."
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More sinister applications? No joke! I got plenty of yer more sinister applications right here!

"I'm really hopeful Apple Computer will be interested in this technology to offer it in their iPod."

Hmmm, an IPOD for the girlfriend for Christmas this year... ;)

Giant 'corpse flower' blooms in Germany - Yahoo! News

Giant 'corpse flower' blooms in Germany - Yahoo! News: "BERLIN (Reuters) - The world's tallest -- and smelliest -- flower has bloomed, reaching a height of 2.94 meters, 18 centimeters more than the previous record for the species, the Stuttgart botanical garden said on Friday.

The Titan Arum, or Amorphophallus Titanum, nicknamed "corpse flower" because of its putrid stench, blooms rarely and briefly."
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I rarely run across science news items that spark ideas for the Zook Terpin series, but this sure qualifies.