Tom got into Science before I did....curse:)

Tom Cross, who is a software security researcher and co-developer of the MemeStream social networking website, also disagrees that “if we want to improve America's scientific competitiveness, we need to increase the supply of technical workers, which will reduce their cost.” Gathering Storm, he believes, has “misdefined the problem, [which] is on the demand side and not the supply side.”

“Technological competitiveness is not about how much technology you are doing but what kind,” he states. “You don't want to lead the world in having development sweatshops where people grind out code for hours at low wages. ... You want to lead the world in creating new innovations.”

Science Magazine quoted my MemeStream. :)

ScienceCareers.org | What's Wrong With American Science? : Benderly: 9 December 2005

] This guy here is Peter Tsou. He's a scientist at NASA's
] Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and he's holding an amazing
] substance called aerogel. Aerogel is a solid, but it is
] 99.8% empty space. In fact, it very closely approaches
] the density of air. It practically IS air. It's still a
] solid, though, and you can even pick it up or set things
] on it.

Very neat.

Hinterlands.cc - 03/26/04: Aerogel

Opportunity's Microscopic Imager found this intriguing object, looking more like Rotini pasta. Its odd shape has stirred up Mars researchers, both inside and outside of the NASA Mars Rover Exploration team. Whether or not this object is related to biology has prompted a variety of views.

Main Story:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/opportunity_news_040302.html

[Looks like it could be some form of bacteria currently dubbed spirochete - http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/spirochetes.html. But I don't know what magnification that pic was taken at....probably too big to be a bacteria:) - Nano]

Martian Pasta

] A Danish biotech company has developed a genetically
] modified flower that could help detect land mines and it
] hopes to have a prototype ready for use within a few
] years.

Yahoo! News - Flower-Power Could Help Clear Land mines

] Why? It's an evolutionary mystery. The ability to regrow
] legs and eyes seems like a clear Darwinian advantage -
] one that surviving generations would have retained. But a
] paradox of regeneration is that the higher you move up
] the evolutionary chain, the less likely you'll have the
] ability to regrow limbs or organs. Keating's mission:
] figure out the cause of this paradox - and reverse it.

Regrow Your Own Broken heart? No problem. New liver? Coming right up. The road to regeneration starts here.

Laying a broad basis for possible future prescriptions, the President's Council on Bioethics yesterday issued an analysis of how biotechnology could lead toward unintended and destructive ends.

Called "Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness," the council's report concerns present and future interventions intended not to restore health but rather to alter genetic inheritance, to enhance mind or body, or to extend life span beyond its natural limits

Bush's Advisers on Biotechnology Express Concern on Its Use

We examine how several prominent and (generally) salutary human pursuits may be aided or altered using a wide variety of biotechnologies that lend themselves to purposes “beyond therapy.” In each case, we discuss the character of the end, consider the novel means, and explore some possible implications, ethical and social.

In surveying the pertinent technologies, we take a somewhat long-range view, looking at humanly significant technical possibilities that may soon -- or not so soon -- be available for general use, yet at the same time trying to separate fact from science fiction.

Biotechnology beyond therapy deserves to be examined not in fragments, but as a whole. Yet, the "whole" that offers us the most revealing insights into this subject is not itself technological. For the age of biotechnology is not so much about technology itself as it is about human beings empowered by biotechnology

Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness

] The job of the hippocampus appears to be to "encode"
] experiences so they can be stored as long-term memories
] elsewhere in the brain. "If you lose your hippocampus you
] only lose the ability to store new memories," says
] Berger. That offers a relatively simple and safe way to
] test the device: if someone with the prosthesis regains
] the ability to store new memories, then it's safe to
] assume it works.

This is amazing stuff.

[This is freakin rad - Nano]

New Scientist: An artificial hippocampus

Interesting application of PCR.

real time PCR

Fifty years to the day from the discovery of the structure of DNA, one of its co-discoverers has caused a storm by suggesting that stupidity is a genetic disease that should be cured.

Watson of "Watson and Crick" provides undeniable proof that intelligence cannot be measured on a single graduated scale.

[wow....well, for one, Watson always likes to stir things up. And he definitly will succeed with this statement. To assume that low IQ is a disease that can be cured is a bit wacky though. If people started to believe that, they would never try to learn something new, and they could goof off in school, because whats the point when their IQ is "out of their control". It is pretty amusing that he said this though...I tend to think that he is just kind of joking around, especially since he added the statement about genetically engineering all girls to be pretty. In rebuttle, Watson, what about making all the guys hot, huh?!?:) - Nano]

Stupidity should be cured, says DNA discoverer - New Scientist