New Scientist: "A small company in London, UK, claims to have developed a technique that overturns scientific dogma and could revolutionise medicine. It says it can turn ordinary blood into cells capable of regenerating damaged or diseased tissues. This could transform the treatment of everything from heart disease to Parkinson's."

Living on air; medical tests on saint suspended - Sify.com: "'The 11-day observation, however, do not justify his claims that he has been living without food or water for the past 65 years,' he added.
'Initially the attempt was to monitor Jani for seven days but his excellent health allowed us to prolong our observation. But the mad rush of visitors seeking 'darshan' at the hospital forced us to discharge him after 11 days. He walked out of the hospital in fine health,' said Dr V N Shah."

Could I Get That Song in Elvis, Please?: "To create the database, technicians record a singer performing as many as 60 pages of scripted articulations (like 'epp, pep, lep'). Assorted pitches and techniques like glissandos and legatos are also thrown in the mix; with all the combinations, the process takes a week of five-hour singing days. The resultant font is 'reminiscent' of the singer's voice, says Ed Stratton, the managing director of Zero-G Limited, a London-based company that has licensed the Vocaloid technology."

New Scientist: "Just half a teaspoon of cinnamon a day significantly reduces blood sugar levels in diabetics, a new study has found. The effect, which can be produced even by soaking a cinnamon stick your tea, could also benefit millions of non-diabetics who have blood sugar problem but are unaware of it.
...The cinnamon has additional benefits. In the volunteers, it lowered blood levels of fats and "bad" cholesterol, which are also partly controlled by insulin. And in test tube experiments it neutralised free radicals, damaging chemicals which are elevated in diabetics."

New Scientist: "Its creators at Waseda University in Tokyo and the Japanese robotics company tmsuk hope their two-legged creation will one day enable wheel-chair users to climb up and down stairs and assist the movement of heavy goods over uneven terrain"

Gene-Altering Revolution Nears the Pet Store: Glow-in-the-Dark Fish: "The genetically engineered pet appears to have arrived. In a development that is likely to inspire both fascination and alarm, a Texas company said yesterday that it would soon start selling a genetically engineered aquarium fish that glows in the dark. The GloFish, as it is called, is a zebra fish containing a gene from a sea coral that makes the fish bright red under normal light and fluorescent under ultraviolet light. Zebra fish, about an inch and a half long, are normally silver and black"

FamilyFun: Family Field Guide: Separation Anxiety and Attachment: "Secure attachments occur when parents are sensitive and responsive to children's needs: when the child cries after a bad dream, a parent responds promptly; when the child smiles at the feel of a breeze on the cheek, a parent smiles; when the child says, "Look at the soft kitty!" a parent replies, "Yes, I see!" These children come to see the world as safe, trustworthy, predictable, and kind."

Smaller Computer Chips Built Using DNA as Template: "The scientists then coated the DNA with gold, producing a simple electronic device consisting of the nanotube connected to gold wires at each end. Current through the nanotube could be switched on or off by applying an electric field — the definition of a transistor."

RSNA News - Salaries Rise for Radiologists in 2002: "Of the 29 specialties the AMGA reviewed, diagnostic interventional radiologists had the highest median compensation in 2002 at $401,000—$500 more than cardiac surgeons. Non-interventional diagnostic radiologists were ranked fifth at $315,000."

New Scientist: "A functional electronic nano-device has been manufactured using biological self-assembly for the first time. Israeli scientists harnessed the construction capabilities of DNA and the electronic properties of carbon nanotubes to create the self-assembling nano-transistor. "

Big-Picture Biotech: "Systems biology, one of the hottest fields to spring from the Human Genome Project, defies a simple description. It promises nothing less than to reshape the way that scientists think about how the human body works, providing clues to unraveling the complexities of illness and ultimately leading to new medicines to prevent and treat disease. But even the Institute for Systems Biology"

New Startup Secret: Dumpster Diving :: AO: "To get started, Wallflower founders Mitch Kahn and Gordon Clyne bought 150 old but unused laptops from liquidators and via eBay, for $25 to $150 each. They were obsolete as workstations (most had 133MHz CPUs and smallish hard drives) but had the right pieces to make nice picture frames"

get NICOLAI: "Internally geared bike fram"

New Scientist: "Baby baboons born to outgoing mums who enjoy hanging out with other females are considerably more likely to survive their crucial first year than infants born to less friendly mothers, reveals the behavioural study."

New Scientist: "Baby baboons born to outgoing mums who enjoy hanging out with other females are considerably more likely to survive their crucial first year than infants born to less friendly mothers, reveals the behavioural study."

New Scientist: "A captive female gorilla has been spotted teaching her daughter how to tend to her newborn. Gorilla mothers are often seen teaching their young to walk and climb, but primatologists believe this is the first report of a mother instructing her daughter on baby care."

Sony Music Soundtrack For A Century

New Scientist: "Nirotek's DVD player, the NIRO 1.1 PRO, achieves the same effect with five individual speakers packed horizontally into a single case. To achieve the surround sound effect, an on-board computer manipulates the signal to each speaker using algorithms that mimic the effects used by the brain to identify the direction a sound is coming from."

Scientific American: Novel Semiconductor Could Soup Up Solar Cells: "Unfortunately, efforts to mass produce solar cells to harness energy from Sol have stalled at efficiencies of around 30 percent in the laboratory and less than 20 percent in commercial cells. A novel crystal described in a paper set to be published in the journal Physical Review Letters may change that, however. Scientists report that the semiconductor material could form the basis of solar cells with nearly 50 percent efficiency."

New Scientist: "The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) recommends that it be given the power to regulate the use of sperm sorting for sex selection and that sex selection should only be used when an embryo is at risk of a serious sex-linked disorder."

Tehran Journal: Marriages Made Not in Heaven but in a Cleric's Office: "But Iranian society is rapidly changing; both men and women are becoming more educated and familiar with the freer ways of the West. More than 62 percent of university students accepted this year were women; about half of graduate students are women. These women are increasingly articulate in demanding a more active role in society — and in their own lives."

BBC NEWS | Technology | Games at work may be good for you: "Playing simple computer games at the office could improve productivity and job satisfaction, research suggests."

Technology Review: Crystal Bends Light Backwards: "They demonstrated that a junction in yttrium orthovanadate—a cheap, readily available crystal—transmits light without reflecting any of it, and is capable of guiding light and beams of electrons through a wide range of angles, both positive and negative."

Demo: Waterproof Anything: "MIT professor Karen Gleason can waterproof just about anything by coating it with an ultrathin layer of Teflon... It repels water, it’s incredibly slippery, and it’s biologically inert, which could make it ideal for coating rain gear, blades for shaving and surgery, and even tiny probes that monitor brain cells during neurosurgery."

Technology Review: Micro Waterflows Make Power: "The device contains millions of microscopic channels, and gleans a small amount of electricity at the surface of each channel. The chemical reaction at the boundary between water and most solids leaves the solid surface negatively charged, which in turn attracts positive hydrogen ions contained in the water. When water is forced through a microchannel it produces a streaming electric current by pushing the positively charged ions in the direction of the water current."

New Scientist: "Similar grooves have been found on fossil teeth dating back 1.8 million years. If the individuals made them by using toothpicks, the habit would qualify as the oldest human custom yet recorded."

BW Online | November 4, 2003 | Let Reverse-Engineering Go Forward: "The U.S. Copyright Office says competing component makers can mimic designs if they have easy, legal access to rivals' parts"

New Scientist: "I'd not have thought of it, but fish do very strange and diverse things"

InfoWorld: Does fair use apply?: February 28, 2003: By Ed Foster: Application Development: "Book publishers also used to claim their products were “licensed, not sold,� but that didn’t make it so. And Intuit's not wanting TurboTax customers to pass along their CDs also doesn’t make doing so piracy."

FOXNews.com - Top Stories - Test Achieves Cholesterol Breakthrough: "The concept is sort of liquid Drano for the coronary arteries"

New Scientist: "The tiny silica particles are plated with gold and heat up when near infrared light (NIR) is shone on them. This kills the cancer cells. Tests on human breast cancers, both in the test tube and in tumours in mice, were highly successful, the researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Everyone's a Programmer: "Software is collapsing under the weight of its own complexity. Charles Simonyi’s solution? Programming tools that are so simple that even laypeople can use them."