Here’s how to make an invisibility cloak - Science - MSNBC.com

By Alan Boyle "Researchers say they are rapidly closing in on new types of materials that can throw a cloak of invisibility around objects, fulfilling a fantasy that is as old as ancient myths and as young as 'Star Trek' and the Harry Potter novels.

Unlike those tales of fictional invisibility, the real-life technologies usually have a catch. Nevertheless, limited forms of invisibility might be available to the military sooner than you think."
=============================

Interesting article. The ideas are basically to take the incoming EM radiation (light, radar, etc) on one side of a "cloak" and use conduits to bend them around the object you want to hide, then let them out on the far side. That way the viewer essentially sees through the hidden object. Right now, you can't be moving for it to work, and it is easier to see radar invisibility happening before visible light, but hey, that's now. What about in 75 years? I may have to rethink my next SF story...

China's longest river "cancerous" with pollution - Yahoo! News

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's longest river is "cancerous" with pollution and rapidly dying, threatening drinking water supplies in 186 cities along its banks, state media said on Tuesday.

Chinese environmental experts fear worsening pollution could kill the Yangtze river within five years, Xinhua news agency said, calling for an urgent clean-up.
==========================

Hmmm, water issues in China, one of the fastest growing powers as well as in the US. Perhaps the future won't be war over oil, but rather over water?

Discovery of anti-freeze gene may be boon for crops - Yahoo! News

Discovery of anti-freeze gene may be boon for crops - Yahoo! News

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian scientists have discovered an "anti-freeze gene" that allows Antarctic grass to survive at minus 30 Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit), saying it could prevent multi-million-dollar crop losses from frost.

"It's a gene from the saltgrass that managed to colonise the Antarctic peninsula called Antarctic Hairgrass," said Professor German Spangenberg from La Trobe University in Victoria state.

"We identified a novel class of a gene protein which binds twice and that prevents ice crystal growth. It has the capacity to survive being frozen rock solid and then thawing. It prevents the damage from ice crystals," Spangenberg told Reuters.

The scientists implanted the "ice recrystallisation inhibition gene" into a host plant in Australia and replicated the anti-freeze properties.
=====================

I knew about the anti-freeze protein in fish and that one frog. The cryogenics people will soon be in business.

Sticky Ends Online: Virus-Resistant Mosquitoes Can Be Genetically Engineered

Sticky Ends Online: Virus-Resistant Mosquitoes Can Be Genetically Engineered

A study led by Colorado State University researcher Ken Olson shows that mosquitoes can be genetically engineered to be weapons against infectious diseases. Researchers triggered a naturally occurring antiviral pathway in the mosquitoes, allowing the researchers to reduce or prevent the mosquitoes’ ability to transmit the virus. The insects were made resistant to the virus, of which there are four types.

“The research results of this study offer promising results for halting the spread of this disease by disarming mosquito’s ability to contract and transmit the dengue type-2 virus, a cause of dengue fever,” says Olson. “It demonstrates that it’s feasible to develop a mosquito that won’t transmit the disease to people by genetically triggering their RNA interference pathway.”

Colorado State University researcher Alexander Franz manipulated the DNA of mosquito embryos by introducing the DNA of a dengue-resistant gene into the embryo. The mosquito was engineered so that it expressed an effector molecule in the mosquito’s gut as the mosquito took in blood containing virus. This effector molecule turned on the RNA interference pathway in gut cells making the cells inhospitable to dengue virus replication. The resulting mosquitoes were resistant to the virus and also were fertile, which lends hope to researchers that they could be introduced into wild mosquito populations and have a widespread impact on the spread of the disease.

During the study, not all of the genetically engineered mosquitoes showed 100% resistance to the virus.“We could potentially replace wild repopulations of mosquitoes with similarly engineered mosquitoes over time, as the wild populations breed with the resistant strains,” Olson says. “For this purpose, the engineered mosquitoes would need to reach 100 percent resistance to the virus.”
=========================

More cool stuff from the interface between genetic engineering and molecular parisitology. But then again, who are we to play God?

Video game therapy - a new frontier - Yahoo! News

Video game therapy - a new frontier - Yahoo! News

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Doctors pronounced Ethan Myers brain dead after a car accident dealt the 9-year-old a severe brain injury in 2002. After he miraculously awoke from a nearly month-long coma, doctors declared he would never again eat on his own, walk or talk.

Yet, thanks partly to a video game system, Myers has caught up with his peers in school and even read a speech to a large group of students.
===========================

I got to try some neural feedback software once. It was just about the coolest thing ever. They strap a bunch of sensors on your head and then you think one way or another to make the cursor move left/right, up/down. Sci Fi become reality.

A Force More Powerful

A Force More Powerful

Can a computer game teach how to fight real-world adversaries—dictators, military occupiers and corrupt rulers, using methods that have succeeded in actual conflicts—not with laser rays or AK47s, but with non-military strategies and nonviolent weapons? Such a game, A Force More Powerful (AFMP), is now available. A unique collaboration of experts on nonviolent conflict working with veteran game designers has developed a simulation game that teaches the strategy of nonviolent conflict. A dozen scenarios, inspired by recent history, include conflicts against dictators, occupiers, colonizers and corrupt regimes, as well as struggles to secure the political and human rights of ethnic and racial minorities and women.
============================

That sounds pretty cool. Too bad there is no demo. Or xbox 360 version. But then, the people who need it most are probably not much into games.

PressZoom.com - Global News Service - News and Press Release Distribution

Australian snakes' venom could provide the next generation of human therapeutic drugs.

A blood-clotting protein in taipan venom has been identified by Queensland University of Technology PhD researcher Liam St Pierre to rapidly stop excessive bleeding during vascular surgery and major trauma.
============================

I smell a sequel for Viral Coat. I could use a trip to Australia. A can visit the Australian Venom Research Unit (http://www.avru.org/) while I'm there.

Icy "super-Earth" found around faraway star - Yahoo! News

Icy "super-Earth" found around faraway star - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A cold, heavy "super-Earth" has been found orbiting a distant star, using a method that holds promise for detecting faraway planets that closely resemble our own, astronomers said on Monday.

The planet weighs 13 times as much as Earth and is orbiting a star about 9,000 light-years away. But instead of circling close to its star, as Earth does, this "super-Earth" is about as distant from its star as Jupiter and Saturn are from the Sun.

An international team of scientists figured the new planet probably has a temperature of minus 330 degrees F (minus 201 C), making it one of the coldest planets detected outside our solar system.

The discovery is billed as a super-Earth because it is thought to be a rocky, terrestrial planet like Earth, even though it is much more massive.

The planet was detected by astronomers using a project called OGLE -- short for Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment -- which looks for changes in light coming from distant stars.
===============================

Cool! A more massive world that is rocky and cold. I'm betting that if life evolved there, they people are short and stocky, strong, and have lots of facial hair. And they live underground. And wield axes. And drink a lot. Also, they speak with a Scottish accent.

Calif. Stem Cell Agency Fights for Life - Yahoo! News

Calif. Stem Cell Agency Fights for Life - Yahoo! News

SAN FRANCISCO - The future of embryonic stem cell research could be shaped in a suburban courtroom where two taxpayer groups are challenging the legality of California's new agency dedicated to the controversial field.

Opening statements were scheduled for Monday in a pair of lawsuits seeking to invalidate the law that created the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, which is authorized to hand out $3 billion in research grants. The lawsuits allege — among other things — that it violates a state constitutional mandate that the spending of taxpayer dollars be under state control.
============================

It doesn't look like they will win, but it will prevent the money from being dispersed for a while. The work will get done. Better to do it here in the states where we have FOIA and other kinds of tools for watchdog groups. If the research goes overseas, who knows what kind of work will get done and who will fund it. But rest assured that it will get done.

U.S. Company Plans $265M Spaceport in UAE - Yahoo! News

U.S. Company Plans $265M Spaceport in UAE - Yahoo! News
LOS ANGELES - A day after Space Adventures announced it was in a venture to develop rocket ships for suborbital flights, the company said Friday it plans to build a $265 million spaceport in the United Arab Emirates.

The commercial spaceport would be based in Ras Al-Khaimah near the southern end of the Persian Gulf, and the UAE government has made an initial investment of $30 million, the Arlington, Va.-based company said in a statement.

The spaceport announcement comes on the heels of Space Adventures' new partnership with an investment firm founded by major sponsors of the Ansari X Prize to develop rocket ships for suborbital flights.
============================

United Arab Emirates seems like an odd choice in location, what with the whole unrest in the middle east thing. Cheap land? Or something more sinister. An evil plot perhaps?

Darwin's nightmare: Toxic toad evolves to secure supremacy - Yahoo! News

Darwin's nightmare: Toxic toad evolves to secure supremacy - Yahoo! News

PARIS (AFP) - He's fat, ugly and poisonous -- and he's mutating. He's the cane toad (Bufo marinus), a species which was introduced into the Australian state of Queensland 70 years ago to tackle insect pests in canefields and has since become an ecological catastrophe.

Weighing in at to up two kilos (4.4 pounds), the unwanted anuran has extended its range to more than a million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) in tropical and sub-tropical Australia, crushing native species in its relentless advance.

===========================
Didn't the Simpsons do an episode where Bart's pet toad got loose in Australia?

Synthetic Biology Offers New Hope For Malaria Victims

Synthetic Biology Offers New Hope For Malaria Victims

In a preview of things to come from the fledgling scientific field of "synthetic biology," researchers with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Physical Biosciences Division (PBD) and the University of California at Berkeley's Chemical Engineering Department are developing a simple and much less expensive means of making one of the most promising and potent of all the new antimalarial drugs.

By adding new genes and engineering a new metabolic pathway in Escherichia coli bacteria, the researchers can quickly and cheaply synthesize a precursor to the chemical compound artemisinin. This next-generation antimalarial drug has proven to be effective against strains of the malaria parasite that are resistant to current front-line drugs, but it is far too expensive right now for the countries in Africa and South America where it is needed most.

"By inserting genes from three separate organisms into the E. coli, we're creating a bacterial strain that can produce the artemisinin precursor, amorphadiene," says chemical engineering professor Jay Keasling, who is leading the research. "We are now attempting to clone the remaining genes needed for the E. coli to produce artemisinin."
============================

Now they need to get compounds that give resistance to express in corn or something that people eat so they don't get the disease in the first place.

Inventor develops anti-malaria wristwatch - Yahoo! News

Inventor develops anti-malaria wristwatch - Yahoo! News: "Gervans Trading"

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A South African inventor has developed an anti-malaria wristwatch to help combat one of Africa's biggest killers by monitoring the blood of those who wear it and sounding an alarm when the parasite is detected.

Gervan Lubbe said his "Malaria Monitor" wristwatch, due to launch next month, could save lives and keep millions out of hospital by heading off the disease before patients even feel ill.

"It picks up the parasite and destroys it so early that the possibility of dying is absolutely zero and you don't even feel the early cold symptoms," Lubbe told Reuters in a telephone interview this week.

The sturdy digital timepiece pricks the wrist with a tiny needle four times a day and tests the blood for malaria parasites.
=====================================

I'm dubious. I've worked with malaria and with microfluidic detectors for pathogenic organisms, and I've not seen anything that small. Malaria is hard to spot, though there are a few tricks you can use. Still, I'd like to see some testing. The website offers no info: http://www.gervans.com/

NEJM -- Bioterrorism -- Preparing to Fight the Next War

NEJM -- Bioterrorism -- Preparing to Fight the Next War: "Furthermore, large-scale industrial processes are not necessary for the development of potent biologic weapons. Increasingly, the means for propagating biologic agents under controlled conditions are being made accessible to anyone. Even our traditional concept of 'weaponization' is misleading: nature provides mechanisms for packaging and preserving many infectious agents that can be manipulated through biologic and genetic engineering — for example, by enhancing the virulence of naturally sporulating organisms. Materials science and nanoscale science — advances in encapsulation technology, for instance — will provide new ways to package such agents. And self-replicating agents that are highly transmissible among humans, such as variola virus and influenza virus, need little or no alteration in order to be disseminated efficiently by terrorists."
=======================================

Hmm, did someone get a sneak peak at my current work-in-progress?

Taiwan breeds transgenic, fluorescent, green pig - Yahoo! News

Taiwan breeds transgenic, fluorescent, green pig - Yahoo! News

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan, home to the world's first transgenic glowing fish, has successfully bred fluorescent green pigs that researchers hope will boost the island's stem cell research, a professor said on Thursday.

By injecting fluorescent green protein into embryonic pigs, a research team at the island's leading National Taiwan University managed to breed three male transgenic pigs, said professor Wu Shinn-Chih of the university's Institute and Department of Animal Science and Technology.

"There are partially fluorescent green pigs elsewhere, but ours are the only ones in the world that are green from inside out. Even their hearts and internal organs are green," Wu said on Thursday.
===================================

Hmmm, they're leaving something out. Injecting the protein into the cell wouldn't cause the pigs to be able to express the protein. Maybe they meant the gene for the protein.

See, this is why science writing should be left to the experts.

Report: Face Transplant Patient Goes Out - Yahoo! News

Report: Face Transplant Patient Goes Out - Yahoo! News

PARIS - The woman who received a new nose, chin and mouth in a groundbreaking transplant operation in November has taken strolls in public without drawing stares, her surgeon said in an interview published Wednesday.

The world's first partial face transplant patient is doing well and is focused on the future — the prospect of returning home from the hospital and restarting normal life, Dr. Bernard Devauchelle told Le Courrier Picard, a regional newspaper in northern France. Because of privacy laws, the woman can be identified only as Isabelle.

The 38-year-old divorced mother of two received her new features from a brain-dead donor on Nov. 27. She was mauled by her pet Labrador last year, leaving her with severe injuries that her doctors said made it difficult for her to speak and eat.
====================================

Wow, that's pretty wild that you can transplant a face. It brings up all sorts of questions about what distinguishes one person from another. Increasingly it isn't physical. It's all about the mind (or soul if you hold certain beliefs). That just goes to show all the racicsts out there how wrong they are. Richard Morgan has a book where people's consciousness can be uploaded from one body and downloaded in another. The body is just a "sleeve". Perhaps it will come true one day...

Todd C Edwards Science and Writing: Remote Control Device 'Controls' Humans - Yahoo! News

Todd C Edwards Science and Writing: Remote Control Device 'Controls' Humans - Yahoo! News

================================
In this one, I joked that I should get my girlfriend an iPod for Christmas since they are hoping to put the human remote control devices in the iPods. They didn't, so I didn't, but she got me one. Hmmm. Suddenly I feel like taking out the trash...

Scientists say magnet therapy is a waste of money - Yahoo! News

Scientists say magnet therapy is a waste of money - Yahoo! News

LONDON (Reuters) - The use of magnetic devices to cure a variety of ills has soared in recent years but there is no evidence they work, according to an editorial in the British Medical Journal.

The market for magnetic bracelets, knee pads and the like may now be worth about one billion dollars a year, but two American scientists argue in the journal on Friday that many people are being fooled as to their therapeutic benefits.

"Money spent on expensive and unproved magnet therapy might be better spent on evidence-based medicine," professors Leonard Finegold and Bruce Flamm wrote.

They said the many studies that purport to show magnets do work are suspect because a magnet's main characteristic -- to be attracted or repelled by metals -- would betray it compared with placebos.

But they said magnet wearers may feel better even if there is no supporting evidence.

"Perhaps subjects with magnetic bracelets subconsciously detected a tiny drag when the bracelets were near ferromagnetic surfaces (which are ubiquitous in modern life), and this distracted or otherwise influenced the perceived pain."
===================================

Hold on, did they say one billion dollers per year? Man, and when I did malaria biomagnetic research, everyone worried that we would be doing damage by putting people in magnetic fields. I may have to add MagnaSpa's to my biotech thriller. Templeton Pierce can sneer derisively at them.

S.Korean panel says stem-cell result fabricated - Yahoo! News

S.Korean panel says stem-cell result fabricated - Yahoo! News: "SEOUL (Reuters) -
South Korea's most famous scientist quit under a cloud on Friday and could face prosecution after investigators said results in a landmark 2005 paper on producing tailored embryonic stem cells were intentionally fabricated."
=============================

That guy's career is pretty much ruined now. Very hard to recover from this sort of thing.

New Scientist Grasshoppers brainwashed into suicide by a worm - News

New Scientist Grasshoppers brainwashed into suicide by a worm - News: "THE trick by which a parasitic worm brainwashes its host into killing itself has been revealed.

The nematomorph hairworm (Spinochordodes tellinii) develops inside land-dwelling grasshoppers and crickets until the time comes for the worm to transform into an aquatic adult. At that point it somehow persuades the insect to jump into water, allowing the adult worm to swim away.

David Biron and his colleagues at the Institute for Development Research in Montpellier, France, have found the worms produce proteins that mimic some of the grasshoppers' own (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2005.3213). Some of the proteins affect neurotransmitter activity and response to gravity."
============================

That's a pretty wild trick. Can Biotech Induced Zombieism (BIZ Syndrome) be far off?