Designer Worms
by Eric Pettifor Remember all those episodes of the various Star Treks where characters were genetically altered, either willingly or unwillingly, by some means or other? It would happen within the course of a single episode and be neatly fixed at the end, with a hypo from the lovely Dr. Crusher. In reality, of course, [...]
Antimatter contained for 17 minutes; hello Vulcans
by Eric Pettifor Canadian researchers (and others, but we’ll focus on lauding our countrypersons) at CERN near North Battleford, Saskatchewan (ok, CERN is really in Switzerland, but it should be in Saskatchewan) have managed to capture and contain antimatter for a whopping 17 minutes (layperson friendly description here). You realize, of course, that this means [...]
Enough with the gay mice
By Jodi A. Shaw Yet another study of homosexuality has been released, this one suggesting that a neurotransmitter is the remote control for sexual preference in mammals. Yi Rao, a neuroscientist at Peking University, and his collaborators engineered male mice unable to produce serotonin, who then demonstrated a preference for other male mice. The mice [...]
Popping iodide pills in BC, despite the Experts
By Frank Moher Updated below I travelled to a local health food store on Monday and bought some kelp tablets. I was actually after potassium iodide, but they were already sold out. I am not naturally a health food store habitué — as I write this, I’m finishing up a Teen Burger meal — but [...]
Jet pack? NOT!
By Eric Pettifor Where is my jet pack? It has been the future now for at least 10 years, or so it seems from the perspective of someone who was alive when men landed on the moon for the first time. Some might say that was the beginning of the future. After all the 1958 [...]
Holograms: not quite there
Viewers of CNN might have been reminded of Star Wars when Wolf Blitzer spoke to a hologram of correspondent Jessica Yellin on election night. Unfortunately, this was a bit of a cheat, since from Mr. Blitzer’s perspective nothing was there — just special effects. This is not to dismiss altogether CNN’s technical achievement. Even if [...]
Doomsday Postponed
The Earth has received a stay of execution due to the failure of some really big superconducting magnets at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Any of you who were concerned that the collision of high energy particles at the LHC would produce a black hole to swallow the earth, including the fine people at lhcdefense.org, [...]
Life on Mars?
Some time ago I posted about the arrival of NASA’s Phoenix Lander on Mars. I noted that the initial images were essentially a postcard letting us know that it had arrived on the red planet and was getting ready to do some work. One of the primary objectives of the mission was to explore the [...]
Taken with a grain of salt
By Eric Pettifor This week we’ll be considering the element known as sodium. What is sodium? Some might say “Sodium is that which makes salt bad for us,” which would be a mis-characterization born of the fact that we get altogether more salt than we need, largely because of its ubiquity in processed foods. In [...]
The Phoenix has landed
The really interesting tech news at the moment is that the Phoenix lander has landed on Mars. They aimed the thing at the planet, it travelled through space, entered the Martian atmosphere, deployed a parachute to slow its descent, and landed where they wanted it to land. All that is in itself amazing, since so [...]
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