From the UK Guardian, a Tunisian woman is due to give birth to 12 babies, which could be a world record. UPDATED: This has turned out to be a complete fraud. Tunisian authorities did tests and the woman is not even pregant. She just has mental problems. Octo is the prefix for eight as in …
The diode-pumped Mercury laser will deliver 100 J pulses at 10 Hz under automatic control, advancing the development of high-repetition-rate inertial laser fusion. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is on target to demonstrate “breakeven”–creating as much fusion-energy output as laser-energy input. The NIF laser will compress a tiny sphere of …
Caterpillar, the world’s largest manufacturer of construction equipment, is starting to support research on the “Contour Crafting” automated construction system that its creator believes will one day be able to build full-scale houses in hours. This is concrete-jet instead of inkjet printing technology. Printing buildings to speed up the economy is one of the key …
A naturally myostatin blocked boy. Antisense RNA has been used to activate myostatin inhibition in mice Mice lacking the myostatin gene have 25–30% increased muscle mass. Individual muscles, such as the pectoralis and quadriceps, of myostatin mutant mice are two- to threefold heavier than those of wild type mice. Antisense RNAs were injected into normal …
For the first time, scientists have created dozens of cloned embryos from adult primates. [details have not yet been published in a peer reviewed journal] The scientists who carried out the latest primate work are believed to have tried to implant about 100 cloned embryos into the wombs of around 50 surrogate rhesus macaque mothers …
VASIMR engine was run for 2 minutes before overheating The company is targeting using the new plasma engine technology to move satellites in low earth orbit in 2010. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News …
I am all for more wind power. We should build more of it and all other power except coal. I was correcting the statement of some people on the oildrum.com and other sites who say that only 4 reactors per year are possible or that it will take a long time to ramp up reactor …
Loss of only one of the genes, a gene encoding the protein PHA-4, negated the lifespan-enhancing effect of calorie-restriction in worms. And, when researchers undertook the opposite experiment—by overexpressing pha-4 in worms—the longevity effect was enhanced. “PHA-4 acts completely independent of insulin/IGF-1 signaling and turns out to be essential for CR-mediated longevity,” says Panowski. “We …
A contest to build a robot that can operate autonomously in urban warfare conditions, moving in and out of buildings to search and destroy targets like a human soldier, was launched in Singapore on Tuesday. Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) is offering one million Singapore dollars ($652,000) to whoever develops a robot that completes …
Fuel cells have been made efficient for small machines like lawnmowers. Many standard fuel cell designs use electronics to control power output, but such designs require complex systems to manage humidity and fuel recovery and recycling systems to achieve acceptable efficiency. The new process controls the hydrogen feed to match the required power output, just …