"By the time he was 45, cardiologist Mark Keating had reached the pinnacle of a doctor's career. He was preparing to move from his prestigious post as an investigator at the University of Utah to an even more exalted position as a professor at Harvard. He'd just won three important prizes for his comprehensive work on the genetics of heart arrhythmias. He seemed destined for even more glory in the field of cardiac genetics.

But oddly, Keating couldn't keep his mind off newts. He was particularly obsessed with an obscure species native to East Coast forests: a bandy-legged amphibian with a flat tail, blunt head, and vivid crimson dots. Red-spotted newts are endangered, but that wasn't what lured Keating away from his heart patients. Rather, newts' famous ability to heal themselves fascinated him - they can produce a new eye or sprout a leg if one is amputated, even reconnect a severed spinal cord. "

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

inignoct wrote:
lots of neat stuff in this article, but this is especially cool :

] DuPont Textiles & Interiors and Outlast Technologies are
] rolling out Phase Change Materials (PCMs) that respond to
] your changing body temperature. The fabric coating
] consists of the materials encapsulated into microscopic
] spheres. As you body warms up, the PCM me

Odor free sox? Does that mean you only ever need one pair that never needs washing?

STAIN-RESISTANT PANTS ARE SO ‘LAST WEEK’; TRY THE ODOR-FREE SOCKS

"Astronomers have detected the deepest note ever generated in the cosmos, a B-flat flying through space like a ripple on an invisible pond. No human will actually hear the note, because it is 57 octaves below the keys in the middle of a piano."

Black Hole Strikes Deepest Musical Note Ever Heard

"Genetically-modified vaginal bacteria may be able to serve as a "living condom", secreting proteins that protect women against HIV, suggests a new report."

I dunno---I think Vaginal bacteria sounds like a bad thing. It makes me think of yogurt.

'Living condom' could block HIV

" In Caldwell's scenario, the universe will last about 20 billion more years. Sixty million years before the end, dark energy will cause the Milky Way galaxy to fly apart. Three months before the end solar systems will break down, flinging planets helter-skelter. Finally, at a tiny fraction of a second before the end of everything, dark energy will be so great that it will overcome the powerful forces that hold matter together, throwing apart atoms. Kablooie! "

Dark Energy May Rip Apart Universe

"Mice with virtually identical genes can grow into quite different-looking animals—fat and yellow, or lean and brown—depending on what their mothers ate during pregnancy. As this ScienCentral News video reports, researchers are studying a twist to heredity that goes beyond our genes."

Blame Your Mother

"It was billed as the one of the most dramatic warnings the world has ever received over the dangers of ecstasy. A study from one of America's leading universities concluded that taking the drug for just one evening could leave clubbers with irreversible brain damage, and trigger the onset of Parkinson's disease.
"...The study was based on the fact that laboratory monkeys and baboons had a severe reaction to the drug when it was injected in small doses. But it emerged this weekend that the vials of liquid did not contain ecstasy. Instead, the animals received a dose of methamphetamine, or speed - a drug widely known to affect the body's dopamine system. The tubes had somehow been mislabelled by the supplier. "

Looks like someone was getting high on their own supply.

Scientists admit: we were wrong about 'E'

] Scientists in China have, for the first time, used
] cloning techniques to create hybrid embryos that contain
] a mix of DNA from both humans and rabbits, according to a
] report in a scientific journal that has reignited the
] smoldering ethics debate over cloning research.

Even though they claim most of the rabbit DNA was removed prior to the fusing, how valid of a test cell would these actually be? Without having 100% of the qualities of a normal cell how could we actually use these and get reliable results?- wilpig

Figures it would have to be a rabbit... Echo needs more Bunnymen. I love the justification for this too--Human eggs are expensive-- Picture this ad a few years from now, "Need a Baby???!!, On a Budget??!!"

Cloning Yields Human-Rabbit Hybrid Embryo (washingtonpost.com)

Comic book physics explained.

The Science of Superheroes

"The sky isn't falling in, say scientists - it is rising. And it's our fault."

Don't buy chicken littles line of crap...

Top of sky is receding