Ray's mastery of the computer improved over the next six months. On May 24, 1999, Kennedy visited Ray at his home in the V.A. Medical Center in Decatur. Kennedy asked what he felt as he moved the cursor. Ray spelled NOTHING. He had learned to move the cursor simply by thinking of moving the cursor. He no longer had to think about moving his hand. The part of his brain that was supposed to dictate movement evolved; it abandoned hope for the appendage. The brain opted instead to communicate directly with the computer.

"That led us to say he has now devoted that part of his brain to driving the cursor," Kennedy says. "See, the brain is very crafty. It's very adaptable. It can learn. And that's really the key thing."

Me: Good article on "jacking in."

Creative Loafing Atlanta | COVER | THE BRAIN OF THE FUTURE

"Dmitry Bulatov is one of a small, but growing, number of artists around the world who are using genetic engineering to create a new form of art known as Ars Chimera, or transgenic art, named for a creature from Greek mythology that had a lion's head, a goat's body and a dragon's tail.
Bulatov, the curator of the Kaliningrad branch of the National Center for Contemporary Art, heads the Consciousness on the Alert (Soznaniye Nastorozhe) project, in conjunction with Moscow's Ivanovsky Virology Institute. One of the goals of the project -- which Bulatov said is currently on hold due to lack of funding -- is the creation of a naturally fluorescent cactus, which scientists would create by introducing genetic material from bioluminescent, or naturally glowing, organisms (in this case, a jellyfish and a sea anemone) into a Lophophora Cactus."

Jello: Bad ASS. I want to play... anyone ever actually use the old Nuts n Volts gene splicing kit?

Ars Chimera: Living, Genetically Engineered Art

] Lung cancer may be caused by a faulty repair mechanism
] triggered by smoking, according to a new study.
]
] US researchers have found that a primitive cell pathway,
] which is crucial for the development of lungs in the
] embryo, could be the major culprit in small cell lung
] cancer (SCLC).
]
] The pathway is found in all creatures, from worms to
] humans. It is called Sonic Hedgehog, after a mutant form
] in fruit fly embryos that leads to the sprouting of hairs
] all over their bodies.
]
] "The hypothesis was that smokers chronically injure their
] airways and pathways such as hedgehog get turned on to
] repair damage - but chronic injury results in persistent
] pathway activation, which leads to cancer," says Neil
] Watkins, team leader at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive
] Cancer Center, part of Johns Hopkins University in
] Maryland.
]
] The group's experiments showed that the Sonic Hedgehog
] pathway was indeed activated in half of 10 SCLC human
] tissue samples. Furthermore, they successfully stopped
] tumour growth in mice by blocking this pathway and
] believe this may lead to potential therapies in humans.

From Nanochick:
This article is particularily interesting to me for several reasons. One is that I am learning about this particular pathway in my Animal Development class (and learned a bit about it in other classes as well), so its just cool to see something in the news about it. Also, what makes this interesting is that lung cancer is the cancer that nobody has seemed to make much headway on in the way of cures...
At the end of this article, they talk about the cells differentiating into adult lung cells...and that means that this could be an important find for other areas of biology as well...such as organogenesis.

Me:

So, what are my chances of lung cancer being cured before I get it?

New Scientist - Faulty repairs blamed for lung cancer

Brian Greene, professor, and author of _The Elegant Universe_: "wonderfully lucid and thoroughly entertaining"
Gilbert Strang, MIT: "a terrific book"
New Scientist: "inspiring"

Oh jesus, I'm an amazon addict. Its already in my shopping cart :(

Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order

The ideas are presented in a clear way, with minimal mathematics, so even students without a deep knowledge of mathematics and statistical physics will be able to rely on this as a reference. Special attention is given to real networks, both natural and artificial. Collected empirical data and numerous real applications of existing theories are discussed in detail, as well as the topical problems of communication networks.

Another book on Networks.. $80? Damn.

Evolution of Networks: From Biological Nets to the Internet and WWW

] Remember that wonderful day when Bugs Bunny hugged you at
] Disneyland? A new study shows just how easy it can be to
] induce false memories in the minds of some people.

I've read about these studies before. The human memory is extremely unreliable, and this has significant implications in court cases. We use statute limitations for this, but there may be more to it then time...

Yahoo! News - Study: False Memories Easily Implanted

] Three-dimensional tubes of living tissue have been
] printed using modified desktop printers filled with
] suspensions of cells instead of ink.

This real cool.

New Scientist - Ink-jet printing creates tubes of living tissue