It could be the biggest thing since sliced bread was wrapped in cellophane: biodegradable food packaging that's cheap enough to compete with conventional plastic. Once used, it can be thrown onto the compost heap or even eaten. This year, startup Plantic Technologies will roll out a cornstarch-based bioplastic that can be molded into everything from Twinkie wrappers to cracker trays.

Say Goodbye to Plastic

"Playboy on Wednesday introduced the stars of its "Women of Enron" issue, current and former employees of the Houston energy trading giant who show their stuff in an issue set to hit newsstands nationally on Friday.

Yahoo! News - Playboy's 'Women of Enron' Debuts in Houston

In Spring 2001, Virginia Tech professor Naren Ramakrishnan taught an entire course on the topic of recommender systems. Here you can browse the syllabus, review slides from the lectures, and review the reading list.

Course overview: CS 6604 concentrates on algorithms, methodologies, systems, and larger-scope issues (economic, commercial etc.) pertaining to reducing information overload. The unique aspect of this course will be how it integrates ideas from diverse areas: numerical analysis (strange but true), information systems, human-computer interaction, and algorithmics. Over the past three years, a large body of literature on recommender systems, filtering, and personalization technologies has been developed. Even though the field is driven by commercial trends and industrial developments, many of the ideas are nearing a stage of stabilization when their use is becoming common place (textbook material). CS 6604 will help illustrate the interplay between these different areas and demonstrate how ideas from diverse backgrounds can be combined in novel and sophisticated ways.

CS 6604: Recommender Systems (Spring 2001)

Shady shady shady

TechNews.com

The other research reports that cells surprisingly similar to embryonic stem cells can be isolated from people's bone marrow.

I have heard rumors through the science grapevine that the stem cells isolated from people's bone marrow isn't as useful as true embryonic stem cells, although I don't know why that would be, other than the fact that they are adult stem cells, not embryonic. Interesting article forwarded to me by Jeremy.

Scientists Make Two Stem Cell Advances

This is horrible and yet, slightly amusing....but mostly horrible. Cogg found this

Southwest will charge large fliers extra fare -- The Washington Times

Does anybody have a comment as to why this book is getting slammed continuously in the reviews section? Are these people just close minded, or does the book suck? Has anyone read it yet?

Amazon.com: buying info: A New Kind of Science

", a team of chemists is unveiling a nanotechnology that allows individual DNA molecules to be painted onto a surface like watercolors onto a sheet of paper. This discovery, in turn, offers an attractive means of assembling nanoscale structures and miniaturizing present generation gene chips by factors of 100,000 or more.

The Code of Life as a Paint Set

"- Australian scientists have used stem cells to grow an organ in mice critical to the immune system, saying the technique could be used to restore the human immune system in AIDS-HIV and cancer patients. "
This is RAD!

Yahoo! News - Australian Scientists Say Can Rebuild Immune System

Lam says that teleporting single atoms and molecules could be perfected within the next ten years"

Ahhh....its going to be so cool when we can just teleport wherever we need to go!
Does anyone know any good books on quantum teleportation?
e-mail me if ya do

New Scientist-Quantum teleportation technique improved