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Human Cloning
Did you miss last month’s National Academy of Sciences workshop on scientific and medical aspects of human cloning? You can listen to the recorded presentations via RealPlayer (use the links at Workshop Agenda) and view the accompanying slides (see Speaker Presentations). Go to: http://www7.nationalacademies.org/COSEPUP/Workshop_Agenda.html –updated 8/26/03–VM.
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From the September 5, 1931, issue
SEEING EYE TO EYE WITH A WHITE WASP The medieval Japanese, who sometimes closed up the fronts of their helmets with ferocious metal masks painted with vivid war paint, knew the right psychology for hand-to-hand encounters. It is much more disconcerting to be confronted with an immobile, wholly artificial hobgoblin face than to see that […]
- Health & Medicine
Milk seems to guard against breast cancer
Norwegian scientists have linked high milk consumption to low incidence of breast cancer.
- Tech
Quantum bell rings to electron beat
A new nanoscale transistor that parcels out electrons with metronome-like regularity has the potential to lead to designs for electronic noses and tiny devices inside of cell phones.
- Tech
Crystal listens for telltale sounds of virus
Scientists have built a device that can hear the movement of viral particles in fluids.
- Health & Medicine
Hindering glutamate slows rat brain cancer
Compounds that inhibit the amino acid glutamate impede a form of brain cancer called glioma in rats.
- Animals
It’s a snake! No, a fish. An octopus?
An as-yet-unnamed species of octopus seems to be protecting itself by impersonating venomous animals from sea snakes to flatfish.
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Human Brains May Take Unique Turn
Preliminary evidence indicates that the human brain may undergo a unique form of fetal development that facilitates the growth of brain areas involved in symbolic thought and language.
- Computing
Computer paints a charged bioportrait
By employing a novel computational strategy, researchers have mapped the electrical landscape of biological molecules made up of more than 1 million atoms.
- Math
Pi à la Mode
A potential link between two disparate mathematical fields—number theory and chaotic dynamics—could lead to a proof that every digit of pi occurs with the same frequency.
- Paleontology
New fossil sheds light on dinosaurs’ diet
Vestiges of soft tissue preserved in a 70-million-year-old Mongolian fossil suggest that some dinosaurs could have strained small bits of food from the water and mud of streams and ponds, just like some modern aquatic birds do.
- Tech
The Seeing Tongue
Blind people can now use their tongues to see, albeit crudely, thanks to prototype technology that involves licking arrays of electrodes attached to video cameras.
