I'm particularly surprised by all the violence, this new Bounty Hunter-centric season looks like it's taking the puppet-like characters a whole lot darker. Which could be pretty great — we're looking for the grim-and-gritty Ahsoka Tano.

The next season will begin on October 2.

The canine six-pack, each named "Toppy" (short for "Tomorrow's Puppy"), were cloned from a Canadian sniffer named Chaser. Three of the dogs have reported for duty at Incheon International Airport, and the rest have been placed at customs offices in South Korean cities.

So why use clones, in lieu of dogs specially bred to sniff drugs? Customs spokesman Park Jeong-Heon said the clones simply proved superior:

They showed better performances in detecting illegal drugs during the training than other naturally-born sniffer dogs that we have.

No word yet on whether South Korea's glowing canine clone has similarly found employment.

South Korean customs deploy six cloned sniffer dogs [PhysOrg]

People are already accusing Knightly's film of being a rehash of The Island. But to be fair, The Island was a rip-off of Parts: The Clonus Horror, which actually filed suit against Bay's movie back in 2005.

This movie, on the other hand, could be a much more intense drama, focusing on the relationships of three young students that grow up inside a boarding school for the sole purpose of raising organ donors. In the book, it sounds like when some of the students became aware of their fate, they've accepted it as their personal life-cycle, or just the way things are. In fact, one of the students' jobs is to comfort a clone who is about to face death, to donate their bits to improve another's life.

The scribe Alex Garland (28 Days Later) will also be producing the picture with award-winning music video director Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) directing.

[Variety">Variety]

Created by longtime concept designer Doug Brode, who previously worked props for Iron Man and JJ Abrams' Star Trek, Forbidden Science is a fun, Flash Gordon-style adventure story set at a company called 4Ever Innovations that makes clones, androids, and the nefarious technologies that support them. In last week's episode we met new hire Bethany, who is curious about the history of a mysterious 4Ever clone named Julia, whose gene and memory donor died the week before.

But forget about the plot for a minute - I'll tell you more about it tomorrow, when we'll be posting an interview with show creator Brode. Just focus on this scene, which demonstrates what happens when female geeks take over the world. Here mega-genius chief scientist Penny welcomes Bethany to the 4Ever team by giving her "a vibrator for your mind." Oh yeah. I'm really liking this show already.

Also, I would like a mindbrator please. Kthx.

Forbidden Science [via HBO/Cinemax]

The kittens pictured here are the children of CC, the first cloned cat. They were born healthy and cute in 2006.

But this year, scientists in Korea announced that they created healthy cloned cats from clones. In a paper published in Theriogenology journal, the creators of the clone-of-clone kittens write:

We successfully produced second-generation cloned cats by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) using skin cells from a cloned cat. Skin cells from an odd-eyed, all-white male cat (G0 donor cat) were used to generate a cloned cat (G1 cloned cat). At 6 months of age, skin cells from the G1 cloned cat were used for SCNT to produce second-generation cloned cats.

No word yet on whether the second-generation clones are cute, but they are definitely alive and thriving.

Think that's crazy? In Japan, scientists have successfully created fourth-generation cloned pigs. Even better than that: One of the first cloned dogs is learning Klingon. According to the San Jose Mercury News:

[Cloned dog] Kahless lives with a linguist in Boulder, Colo., where she is being taught commands in the Klingon language from "Star Trek." (In the "Star Trek" franchise, Kahless was a legendary Klingon leader who was cloned in an episode of "The Next Generation" series.)

Photo via AP Photo/Texas A&M University, Larry Wadsworth.

In The Clone Returns, Kohei Takahara's twin brother dies by drowning, and Kohei blames himself. At his mother's death bed, Kohei promises that he'll live extra long to make up for his brother's death. But years later, Kohei is serving as an astronaut on a space station, and dies in an accident. His widow wants compensation, but then finds out that Kohei asked to be brought back in a clone body, implanted with his memories. Unfortunately, the process is faulty, and the clone is stuck on the traumatic memory of his brother's drowning, and can't remember anything after that. The clone finds the dead body of the original Kohei, and mistakenly thinks it's his twin brother's corpse. The clone decides to carry his own dead body all the way back to his old home town, where he makes a shocking discovery. It sounds incredibly arty, but possibly also brilliant. And here's the trailer:

The Clone Returns to the Homeland trailer

[The Clone Returns, via QuietEarth]

In 2005, the UN General Assembly adopted the non-binding Declaration on Human Cloning, which urges member states “to adopt all measures necessary to prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life.” At the end of the month, the UN’s International Bioethics Committee will gather in Paris to debate the UN’s position on human cloning and advise the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on how it should proceed. Among the issues the IBC will have to consider are:

Should the UN explicitly permit therapeutic human cloning?
Pros: The use of somatic cells and eggs to replicate human tissue has promising implications for the treatment of spinal cord injuries, neurological disorders, and organ failure, meaning it could fall under the umbrella of “protection of human life.” And, since several member states were unwilling to submit to any resolution that could be interpreted as banning therapeutic cloning, the UN may be missing an opportunity to regulate such cloning or enacting a binding ban on reproductive cloning.
Cons: Because the process requires the creation of a blastula, many view therapeutic cloning as violating human dignity on the same grounds as embryonic stem cell research. And others reject it because the embryos it creates could potentially grow into a cloned fetus, making it perhaps one step removed from reproductive cloning.
Likely Outcome: It is likely that the IBC will recommend that the UN avoid attempting to ban therapeutic cloning in favor of encouraging member states to adopt certain restrictions on cloning research.

Should the UN regulate therapeutic human cloning?
Pros: Because human eggs are required for somatic cell nuclear transfer, there is some concern that researchers could exploit women in order to obtain a sufficient supply of eggs. The General Assembly explicitly stated in its resolution that it sought to avoid the exploitation of women in the application of life sciences. Other aspects of therapeutic cloning may similarly risk exploitation of human life and should be investigated.
Cons: Regulating certain aspects of therapeutic cloning at an international level, such as those limiting the development of the blastula, could unduly hamper medical research. Any regulations would have to balance the dual goals of protecting human dignity and preserving human life.
Likely Outcome: An IBC working group set up to analyze the issue has questioned the adequacy of international regulations on human cloning, and recommended that the international community develop guidelines for cloning regulation.

Should the UN enact a binding resolution to ban reproductive human cloning?
Pros: Separating the issues of reproductive and therapeutic cloning could create the appearance of legitimacy for therapeutic research and encourage bright line rules for what the international community is willing to accept.
Cons: Depending on how broadly reproductive cloning is defined, a ban on reproductive cloning could negatively impact therapeutic research. Banning all reproductive cloning would also mean banning reproductive cloning for medical purposes without first exploring how the concepts of human dignity and protection of life might apply in such situations.
Likely Outcome: The working group has recommended that the UN address reproductive cloning as a separate issue from therapeutic cloning and that the General Assembly pass a binding convention to ban reproductive cloning.

UN Ethics Panel To Reconsider Human Cloning Ban [Scoop]

Here's the plot synopsis of Possibility, according to distributor Celluloid Dreams:

Years after separating from his father’s sect, Daniel decides to return to the commune where he grew up. Daniel realises that the promise of immortality made to the sect’s followers, has in fact, become a reality through modern cloning techniques.

His father volunteers to be the first clone and Daniel replaces him. 25 generations later, Daniel25 has survived the cataclysms that have devastated the human race. He lives like a hermit in a high-tech, subterranean bunker protected from contamination. His sole companion is a dog. The satellite images he sees on his screens reveals the presence of a beautiful woman. Daniel25 can’t resist the impulse to follow her…

On the face of it, this movie has got everything. Cults, communes, cloning, immortality, daddy issues, post-apocalyptic wastelands and sex. So what happened? The Guardian explains:

It is fair to say that The Possibility of an Island is a curious film - a sci-fi movie about cloning, weird religious sects and human life after the apocalypse. There is an unevenness of tone: certain sequences, such as a bikini contest set in a Lanzarote beach resort, wouldn't look out of place on The Benny Hill Show. Elsewhere, the film is more in the spirit of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, notably the shots of Benoît Magimel (as a character called Daniel25, the last man alive), roaming through a barren landscape with his dog in tow. The soundtrack features Mozart and Beethoven, and at times the film has an austere beauty; at others, it is reminiscent of an old episode of Star Trek. The critics were not kind. This week Le Figaro's Brigitte Baudin described The Possibility of an Island as "ridiculous" and "catastrophic", while Corriere della Serra's Maurizio Pollo wrote that it was "of a quite exemplary tedium". Others were less damning: the critic at El País reported that Houellebecq had directed his first film "with more enthusiasm than results".

So what I mostly learned from the above paragraph is that in addition to featuring cloning, cults and daddy issues, it also has a slapstick bikini contest. And that the low-budget film resembles an episode of original Star Trek at times. Still not seeing why this film is not destined for greatness. Oh, and here's an interview with the man himself about his novel:

[Guardian]

Stay Out Of The Basement:
A family father/scientist, Dr. Brewer, becomes obsessed with his flora experiments in the basement. His obsession begins to affect his behavior when his kids discover he bleeds green, is eating plant food and sleeping on dirt. It is later revealed that dear old dad was growing human clones from plants and the man they've been dealing with is really his plant clone. The real Dr. Brewer then destroys all of human and plant hybrids. But who's to say that's the real Dr. Brewer?

Why I'm Afraid Of Bees:
Gary Lutz's is a fan of computer role playing games. His computer games lead him to a company that advertises a real-life role playing game, where clients can switch bodies with other clients. Similar to The Fly, Gary accidentally gets stuck in the body of a bee that enters the machine during the switch. While his body has the mind of his partner, his partner's body is stuck with the mind of a bee, and Gary has the body of a bee.

Attack Of The Mutant:
Comic book fan Skipper Matthews is in fan-fantasy world when he discovers his favorite comic book characters have come to life in his town. Together he helps to defeat the villainous Masked Mutant. But unfortunately (or fortunately) Skipper gets sucked into their world (via ray gun) and becomes a real life comic book character as well, who bleeds ink.

Egg Monsters From Mars:
Dana (boys name) finds a mysterious egg and discovers that it's really from some crazy scientist. The egg hatches and the little monster becomes a pet to him. Of course the scientist will stop at nothing to get his eggs back, and the monster protects Dana, who later gets knocked up by one of the aliens.

The Cuckoo Clock of Doom:
This book was every siblings dream. Michael's bratty sister Tara is ruining his life and causing him embarrassment and beat downs from local bullies. For his birthday Michael receives a cuckoo clock that has the power of time travel. Michael figures out the switch and jumps back into time. Unfortunately for Michael he is stuck on a backwards loop that jumps him back year by year until he is a little baby. He figures out a way back, but manages to erase his sisters existence in the process.

Let's Get Invisible:
A mirror connected to a light switch allows a group of kids to turn themselves invisible. They all experiment on how long they can change back and forth until the connection fizzles and one child gets stuck in the mirror. The mirror world is another dimension where their evil twins have been trying to break out into the real world. By the end of the book you don't know who is the original character and who is their doppelganger.

Invasion of the Body Squeezers/ Revenge of the Body Squeezers (Part One And Two):
Very close to invasion of the body snatchers, but the aliens get into your body via hugs. In the second part though you get introduced to a whole host of new aliens that are trying to set off a bomb that would squeeze all humans into a tiny size.

Piano Lessons Can Be Murder:
This book straddles the scifi fence a little. Jerry is a little boy taking piano lessons from the deranged Dr. Shreek. The piano teacher is fascinated by Jerry's hands, and it's later revealed that Dr. Shreek is a large robot that harvests hands for his master. Granted Jerry gets saved by the ghosts of it's past victims...so not entirely scifi, but the still hand stealing robot helps.

The answer is: not for a really, really long time. First of all, genetically-modifying a viable human embryo (which the one in the aforementioned experiment was not) is illegal in most countries. Second, we wouldn't know how to modify a human embryo to enhance its superpowers even if we wanted to. Sure we might be able to knock out a few genetic diseases given a few more years, or make it glow like those bunnies and kittens with the fluorescent fur.

A recent article in AP makes it clear exactly what this so-called 'designer embryo' really was:

"None of us wants to make designer babies," said Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

The idea of designer babies is that someday, scientists may insert particular genes into embryos to produce babies with desired traits like intelligence or athletic ability. Some people find that notion repugnant, saying it turns children into designed objects, and would create an unequal society where some people are genetically enriched while others would be considered inferior.

The study appears to be the first report of genetically modifying a human embryo. It was presented last fall at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, but didn't draw widespread public attention then. The result was reported over the weekend by The Sunday Times of London, which said British authorities highlighted the work in a recent report.

Rosenwaks and colleagues did the work with an embryo that had extra chromosomes, making it nonviable. Following a standard procedure used in animals, they inserted a gene that acts as a marker that can be easily followed over time. The embryo cells took up the gene, he said.

The goal was to see if a gene introduced into an abnormal embryo could be traced in stem cells that are harvested from the embryo, he said. Such work could help shed light on why abnormal embryos fail to develop, he said.

Genetically-modified embryo stirs criticism [AP via PhysOrg]

Christensen writes:

Science fiction fans might consider this to be a commercial business use of the RePet technology used in the film The Sixth Day. The cloning research and work was done by a team of Seoul National University scientists led by Professor Lee Byeong-chun. Now, if only they could master syncording, which is the fictional technology in The Sixth Day that assured that your new RePet was behaviorally identical to your old pet, they wouldn't even need to train them!

Given the black market in imitation pharmaceuticals, it might also be useful to have a dog that could sniff out cloned drugs, too. Imagine a dog that could tell the difference between Pfizer's Viagra, and Bob's black market V1agr@.

Korean Cloned Drug-Sniffing Dogs [Technovelgy]

Probably pretty difficult, not least of which because we don't go through an embryo stage outside the womb.

According to an article by Clara Moskowitz in Live Science:

Scientists exposed 4-day-old sand dollar larvae to fish mucus, a sign that danger is close. They found that the larvae created clones of themselves within 24 hours.

"It's the first time we've seen anything clone itself in response to cues that predators are near," said researcher Dawn Vaughn, a biology doctoral student at the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories. After being exposed to fish mucus, the larvae formed embryo-like buds that eventually detached and developed into new, genetically-identical larvae that were much smaller than the originals. The parent larvae were left smaller, too, measuring about half their beginning size . . .

The scientists think cloning may provide a double benefit to larvae facing danger. By doubling themselves, they have a second chance to ensure their genetic information survives even if one larva gets eaten.

Additionally, being smaller may be beneficial to larvae trying to hide from fish.

"Fish are visual predators and often choose their prey based on size," Vaughn told LiveScience. "You're apt to see something bigger. Based on past research, we're hypothesizing that small size protects larvae, but we have to test that."

Creatures Clone Selves in Face of Danger [Live Science]

Fringe focuses on the brilliant-but-maybe-crazy scientist Walter Bishop (Noble), his estranged son... and the female agent who brings the two of them together. When the show starts, the elder Bishop is in an institution. Every week, the show focuses on another self-contained paranormal mystery, plus the relationships among the characters. Also, Lance Reddick (The Wire) will co-star as Phillip Broyles, special agent for Homeland Security. Broyles heads up the special Fringe division, set up to investigate a series of terrorist/paranormal events. Alex Graves (Journeyman) will direct the pilot.

Of course, J.J. is in the can-do-no-wrong zone right now, so maybe this show will subvert X-Files the way Cloverfield subverted Godzilla. You never know, right? [Production Charts]

Researchers took DNA from one of Wood's skin cells, injected it into a human egg cell from the fertility clinic next door to Stemagen, and created a multi-celled embryo — essentially the same size embryo that a fertility clinic would implant into a woman undergoing IVF treatments. Wood, however, emphasizes that he's horrified by the idea of human cloning and wants only to use this new technique to make stem cells for therapeutic purposes.

I say, bring on the human clones. Kerry Macintosh, a law professor, has recently written a fascinating book, Illegal Beings, about how the biggest problem with human clones is their legal status. She argues that when a human clone is born its identity will have to be kept secret — under current law, the clone's existence is illegal and therefore it would have no human rights and would have to be confiscated by the government if found out. So there might be human clones out there right now, but the frightened parents would never reveal it for fear of losing their child.

Mature Human Embryos Created from Adult Skin Cells [Washington Post]

Apollo's Song was originally serialized in a weekly comic magazine back in 1970. This was during the transition phase of Tezuka's career—his production company had just tanked, and he was skeptical of the anime industry, which insisted on censoring his work. It was the same year that he wrote Alabaster, a story about a homicidal, partly invisible ex-athlete intent on destroying all the beauty in the world.

For Tezuka, science fiction was never a goal; it was the medium through which he chose to explore complex, often taboo issues of his time, like love and hate and promiscuous sex. By addressing these issues via animated fictional characters living in a surreal future, he avoided controversy and criticism in the real world.

Apollo's Song is a coming-of-age story that starts in the present and warps back and forth into the past and future. The ambiguous protagonist is a boy named Shogo, who learned to despise the idea of love during a childhood mired in his mom's promiscuous affairs with his many papas. He hates it so much that he obsessively murders any living thing showing even the slightest hint of passion. These killing sprees land him in a mental hospital, where a mysterious doctor puts him through electroshock therapy and transports him into different roles, each in extreme imagined environments—an island where dozens of zoo animals procreate, an isolated house in the mountains, and Nazi Germany. Through his adventures, Shogo finally learns to love. Hypnosis takes him to his final destination—Tokyo in the year 2030, where super-humanoid clones called Synthians rule a cold, heartless world. There, Shogo is caught between two tasks he's been ordered to perform—to kill the Synthian queen, but also to teach her how to love.

The inner lives of animals, reproduction, twisted sexuality, reincarnation, and the inevitable war between humans and their creations—clones and robots—are themes that arise repeatedly in Tezuka's manga. Even today, a lot of Japanese people don't talk that openly about love and sex. Manga is often a prime medium for understanding these issues—sex ed is often taught in comic strips, and almost every male magazine has pornographic graphic novels tacked into its end pages.

Nearly 20 years after his death and over half a century past his heyday, only twelve of Tezuka's titles have been published in English. But with the Asian Art Museum's recent exhibit on Tezuka and other titles being worked on by publishers like Vertical and Viz, we should be seeing a greater rollout in the years to come. If you're going to start somewhere with Tezuka's science fiction works, Apollo is the place to go.

A truly brilliant invention, the chickie knobs are basically vat-grown chicken that has been so incredibly genetically modified that they're basically balls of flesh with holes to stick food in, and an ass to poop out of. They're the epitome of the grotesque bio-engineered world of tomorrow that Atwood portrays so horrifyingly in the novel.

When the FDA approves cloned meat for consumption, you can bet that people will freak out about it. Though there are no known health risks associated with eating clones (you eat cloned veggies all the time), people just think it's icky. Not sure why it's somehow ickier to eat a clone than it is to eat a cow bred for generations to be dumb and fat, but whatever.

Cloned Livestock Poised to Receive FDA Clearance [WSJ]

• Chloe's power is finally revealed: While we already knew Chloe was a meteor freak with some kind of magical healing tears, it wasn't really shown what she could actually do until this episode. She takes Jimmy's cut finger in her hand and makes the poor little boo-boo go all bye-bye with some sort of weird E.T. light-up hands. Her one tear could bring Lois back from the dead, but it takes a lot of effort just to seal up a one-inch cut? Give us a break.
• Grant Gabriel is a clone of Julian Luthor: We've also knew that Grant Gabriel was Lex's long-dead brother Julian for a few episodes, last Thursday was the first time it was revealed that he was actually a clone of Lex's brother, who died when he was 12 years old. Lex has been playing around in the cloning toybox and trying to bring his brother back. The first effort resulted in a clone who aged prematurely, but he seems to have it fine-tuned now. However, everyone seems to have forgotten about Lucas Luthor, Lex's other younger brother who he had hidden away several seasons ago. Counting last night's old clone, Julian, and Lucas, that gives Lex quite a family reunion to come home to. Of course, he put a bullet into old clone's chest, which will make it a bit awkward at future family meetings.
• Brainiac is on the way back: The last time we saw Milton Fine / Brainiac, he was reduced to a tiny bit of goo living in a glass vial. Last night Chloe told Clark that the fluid was evolving and getting smarter each time it tried to escape. It's liquid with a memory and a mission, but how the hell does Chloe come by this stuff? She can translate Kryptonian, hack military firewalls, and score top-secret lab reports. Too bad her talents are wasted in the basement of the Daily Planet. She could be a one-woman Geraldo.
• Clark is actually Bizarro: Clark returns from a two-week visit to the Fortress of Solitude and everything seems to be just hunky dory with the Young Adult of Steel. That is, until he hugs Lana near the end of the episode and we his shift turn angular and crystalline for the briefest of seconds, meaning he's the Bizarro version of Clark. Then we see what we imagine is the real Clark, trapped inside some kind of glass chamber back in the Fortress that looks like the device that took Supey's powers away in Superman II. So why the hell is Bizarro acting so nice and hugging folks? We'll have to wait until next year to find out.

• We were going to add "Clark finally flies!" to this list, but it turned out to be Bizarro-Clark shooting up that stairwell like a comet, so we'll still have to wait to see him take to the skies. At which point the show should instantly be canceled for violating its "No flights, no tights" rule. Then again, they should have put the brakes on this show back when it started to suck. Four seasons ago.

They're sitting down, very clone-like, for a meeting. They all have official name tags and little mics to speak into. Not like they need it—they're probably all thinking the same thing. At least they won't have a problem reaching a unanimous decision. Image from "Lost Control" published by Die Gestalten Verlag

Lost Control [via PingMag]

Says Brendan Tobin of the Irish Center for Human Rights, an author of the report:

Failure to outlaw reproductive cloning means it is just a matter of time until cloned individuals share the planet. If failure to compromise continues, the world community must accept responsibility and ensure that any cloned individual receives full human rights protection. It will also need to embark on an extensive awareness building and sensitivity program to ensure that the wider society treats clones with respect and ensure they are protected against prejudice, abuse or discrimination.

Most of the report urges the international community to set up better laws against human reproductive cloning, essentially threatening them with the stick of having to take sensitivity training to deal with clone co-workers. I guess the worst thing that the UN can imagine is another minority group demanding its rights. They also talk about the two main arguments against human reproductive cloning: religious concerns, and fear of commoditizing human life. (They leave out what to me seems like the most important issue, which is that making a human clone is essentially to experiment on a human subject without permission.)

No matter how you slice it, the UN document is pretty damn anti-clone. For a less clone-phobic legal analysis of clone rights, check out law professor Kerry MacIntosh's book Illegal Beings: Human Clones and the Law (Cambridge University Press). At least she offers several legal methods to assert civil rights for clones. Getty Image by Martin Oeser.

Is Human Cloning Inevitable: Future Options for UN Governance [UN University]