The "brainbow," with its dozens of glowing colors, was created when scientists mixed a few of the primary colors available from fluorescent jellyfish proteins (green isn't the only one). They wound up with nearly 100 colors, and used them to tag neurons in the brain so that they could follow the complicated interlinking pathways of each neuron and see the neurological structures of a mouse brain.

Early experiments with GFP created mice like these, which express the glowing green gene in all their cells — not just neurons. The result is a mouse that glows just like a jellyfish.

Usually, however, scientists link GFP with another gene — if the creature they've engineered emerges glowing like these monkeys, they know the linked gene is active too. These monkeys were engineered to have the gene for Huntington's Disease, and the gene was tagged with GFP. Because they glow, researchers are certain they have the sought-after gene and can study the monkeys to figure out possible cures for this neurodegenerative disorder.

Chemistry Nobel for Green Jellyfish Protein [New Scientist]

Nobel Prize for Chemistry Illuminates Disease [UK Guardian]

Tree of Life is an effort to construct a huge genetic family tree connecting all the life forms on Earth. Determining how long a species has been a species by comparing its molecular evolution to similar life forms is an important part of figuring out all those relationships. While studying this, the Yale team figured out that plants with very short generations (that is, with the shortest "seed to stem" time) had very high rates of molecular evolution. Large, woody plants that reproduced at a more stately pace were not as genetically varied from one and other. To anyone who understands natural selection, this doesn't come as a big surprise, but plants act a bit differently from animals in this regard, so patterns of plant evolutionary speed had been elusive.

What can we do with this information? For one thing, it will be a major boon to Tree of Life and other genetic cataloging projects. But jump forward 20 years. Imagine computers powerful enough to create a virtual plant based on a fully sequenced genome. Imagine running that plant through tens of thousands of generations (even plants that usually evolve slowly), with the ability to set the parameters within the virtual environment. Instead of genetically modifying a plant by tweaking a base pair here and there, you could create genomes customized to specific conditions, refined by all those iterations of natural selection. Sure, we don't have the ability to take the resulting virtual genome and make it into a living thing, but we might in 20 years.

Which is all well and good until the night janitor decides to run some virtual mice through a few million generations in an ultra-competitive environment filled with deadly predators, then manages to process the resulting MegaMice through the sequencing/cloning machine. Image by: ausiegall.

Key To Rapid Evolution In Plants: Reproduce Early And Often. [Science Daily]

Johann Dippel: An actual inhabitant of Castle Frankenstein, Dippel is believed by many to be an inspiration for Shelley’s story. His life’s work was to discover the Elixir of Life, which would make anyone immortal, and created "Dippel’s Oil," an elixir made from bones, blood, and other bodily fluids and widely used as a neurostimulant. He was also rumored to have been an ardent vivisectionalist, frequently stealing corpses from the local graveyard.

Andrew Ure: Ure was also looking for the secrets of life in human corpses. He obtained and experimented on the body of John Clydesdale, a criminal who had been executed by hanging. Ure caused a stir among the scientific community when he revealed the nature of his experiements. He claimed that men who had died of suffocation, drowning, or hanging could be restored to life through the stimulation of the phrenic nerve.

Giovanni Aldini: Luigi Aldini discovered that a frog’s legs would kick as electricity traveled through the muscles. His nephew Giovanni took the discovery a step further. He studied the effects of galvanizing human and animal bodies. He publicly electrified a recently severed dog’s head, giving it the appearance of life. He also performed experiments on recently deceased criminals, churning electricity through them to achieve momentary reanimation. His corpses convulsed, grimaced, and even raised their limbs, much to the shock of onlookers. Aldini was also the first to use electric shocks to the brain in the treatment of neurological disorders, a practice still in use today.

Gabriel Beaurieux: France’s use of the guillotine led to Beaurieux’s fascination with severed heads. He examined heads immediately after decapitation and noted that the heads would open their eyes, fix their pupils on the objects before them, and even respond to their own names for several seconds before appearing to completely lose consciousness.

Robert Cornish: Building on the work of George Washington Crile, who pioneered the blood transfusion, Cornish worked in resuscitating dead animals. After asphyxiating dogs in a lab, Cornish would place the bodies on a teeterboard while infusing them with saline, oxygen, and adrenalin. The fourth and fifth dogs in the experiment (named Lazarus, as were their less fortunate predecessors) were successfully revived, although they never fully recovered. Cornish went on to play himself in Life Returns a film about a doctor who works to revive the dead.

Sergei Bryukhonenko: We have mentioned Soviet scientist Sergei Bryukhonenko before. Another fan of canine experimentation, Bryukhonenko invented the autojektor, a heart and lung machine, and proved its efficacy by attaching it to a severed dog’s head, which stayed alive, eating and drinking.

Vladimir Demikhov: We can credit Demikhov with many modern advances in organ transplants, but he is perhaps best remembered for his work in two-headed dogs. Demikhov transplanted the head and front legs of one dog onto a second dog’s body. Both dogs were awake, aware, and hungry. He made 20 of these two-headed creatures, but, tragically, due to tissue rejection, none of them lived longer than a month.

Robert White: Following the revelation of the Soviet Union’s two-headed dog program, the United States began working on some mad transplant programs of its own. During the 1970s, surgeon Robert White successfully transplanted the head of one monkey onto the body of another. Because he was unable to repair the resulting nerve damage, the monkeys were paralyzed from the neck down, but the heads themselves could see, taste, think, and feel. It was believed the monkeys could survived this way indefinitely, although they were ultimately euthanized.

Penicillin - Alexander Fleming was studying bacteria in his own messy way, with no intention of discovering the 20th century's most vital antibiotic. Indeed, his lab sounds like something out of a sci-fi/horror movie, with bacteria and random fungus growing everywhere. Some of the accidental fungus had been tossed away, but looking more closely, Fleming noticed that bacteria wouldn't grow near some of the stuff. It took the work of others to refine and mass produce the extracted antibiotic substance, but if Fleming kept a neater shop, we may never have found it to begin with.

The Aether Wind - In the 19th century, physicists were stumped by the nature of light. It seemed to behave like a wave, so there had to be some substance in space for it to move through. They dubbed this hypothetical intergalactic substance "aether." It was theorized that the motion of the Earth through space, relative to the motionless aether, would subtly alter the speed of light depending on where in its orbit Earth was and what direction you were facing. This was called the "aether wind" effect. Polish-American scientist Albert Michelson (Polska represent!) designed an interferometer that could precisely measure the speed of light and thus detect this wind effect. After several tries and refinements to make his device incredibly accurate, no change in the speed of light was detected. Michelson, along with pretty much every other physicist at the time, was stunned. No aether? WTF?

Rocketry - No scientific failure is perhaps as spectacular as that of a rocket exploding on the launch pad, like the Vanguard rocket expiring in the 1957 photo above. The rockets that have died in the name of science number perhaps in the thousands, yet they did not die in vain. NASA and other government space agencies can put people and payloads into space with astonishing consistency (private rocketry is still catching up), giving companies the confidence to send aloft hugely expensive satellites and ambitious scientific equipment. Our world would be very different if we hadn't learned so much from all those shattered rockets.

Biosphere 2 - We built a big dome and let a bunch of people live in it (none of them were Pauly Shore) to see if they could sustain themselves solely on the air, water and food produced by the plants inside. They couldn't. The overriding element of the Biosphere 2 experience for most participants was "hunger." But when we build a colony on the moon or Mars or somewhere even more interesting, we will build on the lessons learned via Biosphere 2's rampant pizza cravings.

Nuclear Fusion - Is it a pipe dream or a holy grail? Either way, each failed experiment brings us one step closer to deciding that fusion is not worth pursuing any longer/going to provide us with so much energy we'll be giving it away. There have been lots of failed fusion experiments, but one of the coolest happened in 2002, when scientists sent incredibly strong sound waves through acetone. This created bubbles that expanded, then imploded at very high temperatures. It was hoped that the temperatures and pressures would be high enough to foster a fusion-friendly environment, but they fell a few million degrees short. Still, it hasn't dampened our enthusiasm one bit.

Honorable mention goes to Chernobyl. It was an ill-advised emergency shut-down experiment that caused that catastrophic meltdown and explosion there. Image by: NASA.

Each nano-missile, which its inventors also call (charmingly) a "chocolate-covered nut cluster," is able to evade detection in the body for hours because it's coated in a specially-modified lipid (the chocolate coating) that makes it look like a typical cell as it tumbles through your bloodstream. Attached to the outside of the missile is a protein called F3, a molecule that binds to cancer cells. F3 does surveillance, looking for target cells. When the missile finds those cells, it releases its payload — cancer drugs and florescent markers called quantum dots that tell doctors where cancer cells have been hit. (You can see the glow of the quantum dots in a vial full of the nano at left.)

Essentially, these researchers have developed one of the first smart drug delivery systems. This is a drug that literally seeks out diseased tissue and hits only that tissue with its payload. Ji-Ho Park, a researcher who worked on the study, said:

This study provides the first example of a single nanomaterial used for simultaneous drug delivery and multimode imaging of diseased tissue in a live animal.

The nano-missile has been tested in mice. Next, the researchers hope to make the missiles even more targeted by coating them with proteins that seek out specific tumors or organs.

Researchers Develop Nano-Sized Cargo Ships [via UC San Diego News]

PhysOrg has the report:

At birth, humans have about 30,000 hair cells, which can be damaged by infections, ageing, genetic diseases, loud noise or treatment with certain drugs.

In most cases, damaged hair cells do not regrow in mature humans. But recent research has kindled hope that nerve deafness may one day be curable.

A team of scientists led by John Brigande at the Oregon Health and Science University, in Portland showed that implanting a gene known as Atoh1 into the inner ear of a mouse embryo coaxed non-sensory cells to become hair cells.

Brigande is confident that this technique could be used in humans too, after a reasonable period of testing. What's fascinating is that this research allows scientists to generate sensory hair cells out of other kinds of cells. Which could lead far beyond the "super hearing" idea. What if skin cells on your fingertips were genetically altered to produce these sensory hairs? Would you "hear" in your fingers? Image by Shayne Davidson/Human Molecular Genetics.

Growing New Ear Hairs that Can Boost Hearing [PhysOrg]

The winners in our two categories will get either an all-expenses-paid trip to the kickass Synthetic Biology Conference in Hong Kong this October, or $1000 and a chance to have their creature drawn by a cool comic book artist. Find out more below.

There are two categories in the contest, each with their own prize. The important thing to remember is that this contest is about creating cool new lifeforms that are also, in some way, entertaining. So each entry will be judged for plausibility (i.e. whether it is scientifically justifiable), creativity, usefulness, and entertainment value.

Our esteemed judges include synthetic biologist Drew Endy (MIT), evolutionary biologist and PLoS co-founder Michael Eisen (UC Berkeley), Spore game developer Jason Shankel (EA/Maxis), and biology researcher/io9 "ask a biogeek" columnist Terry Johnson (UC Berkeley).

Category One: BioBricks Lifeform
Using the BioBricks registry of standard biological parts, propose a lifeform design that you could conceivably create in a lab. Must include a complete description of how you would make the lifeform, what it would do, and what possible hazards might be involved in creating it. You may design this creature with a team, but only one of you can claim the prize. You may enter lifeforms that you have entered in other contests, but you must state in your entry which contest(s) you've already entered. Your entry should be in the form of a short scientific paper (no more than 3000 words), with illustrations. More points given if you've actually got a working organism.
Prize: All travel and hotel expenses paid trip to the Synthetic Biology Conference in Hong Kong in October, as well as the chance to present your research there.

Category Two: General Synthetic Lifeform
This lifeform can be more creative. Propose a scientifically justifiable lifeform, which could conceivably be created using current technology. Explain how you would create it, what it would do, and hazards involved. Unlike the BioBricks lifeform, this lifeform can be more speculative. It should be science fictional, but must remain scientifically plausible. Your entry should be less than 3,000 words, please. Illustrations and diagrams are a good idea.
Prize: $1000, plus a cool comic book artist will draw your lifeform and you'll get a signed copy of the original art.

DEADLINE FOR ALL ENTRIES IS AUGUST 25 AT MIDNIGHT PST.

General Rules

1. Send queries and completed entries to madscience@io9.com.
2. On entries, please include your full name, an email and phone number where we can reach you, plus any information about other contests you may have entered your lifeform in.
3. Winners will be announced September 8.
4. All general Gawker contest rules apply.

Venter and the other authors of the study say that sometimes people of the same race share genetic similarities, but not often enough to base drug targeting on racial groups. The researchers prove their point by examining the two most-studied human genomes in the world: Those of white guys Craig Venter and James Watson. Turns out that the men's genomes are dissimilar enough that they would likely respond quite differently to common antidepressants — despite the fact that both identify as white. (This is particularly amusing for those who have followed Watson's career, since he was recently suspended from his job for racist comments about the genetic inferiority of blacks.)

Write the authors:

[Venter and Watson's] genetic differences underscore the importance of personalized genomics over a race-based approach to medicine. To attain truly personalized medicine, the scientific community must aim to elucidate the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to drug reactions and not be satisfied with a simple race-based approach . . . One's ethnicity/race is, at best, a probabilistic guess at one's true genetic makeup.

This study, while mostly focused on personalized pharmaceuticals, has far-reaching implications. Essentially the authors are arguing that race has little to do with people's genomes, which flies in the face of at least a century of received wisdom that race is "genetic" as well as cultural. Write the scientists, "This [study] speaks to the value of knowing genomic sequence instead of relying on a patient's appearance or self-identified ethnicity."

The authors also go on to say that sometimes even when a racial group appears to present similar biological problems, this may have less to do with genetics than environment:

For example, the higher incidence of hypertension in African Americans has been linked to darker skin color, but this may be due instead to socioeconomic status and higher levels of stress rather than to genetics.5 Knowing that socioeconomic status is related to hypertension allows us to identify individuals at risk regardless of race. Given the complex nature of drug responses, it would ultimately better serve all to dissect the relevant factors of a drug response instead of categorically stereotyping a culture with a presumed genetic background.

I am impressed. This quiet little study, published in an academic journal, has implications go far beyond the world of medicine and into the realms of politics and even (dare I say it) social justice.

Individual Genomes Instead of Race for Personalized Medicine [Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics]

Over at Danger Room, Noah Shachtman quotes from the University of California at Irvine researchers:

The brain-computer interface would use a noninvasive brain imaging technology like electroencephalography to let people communicate thoughts to each other. For example, a soldier would "think" a message to be transmitted and a computer-based speech recognition system would decode the EEG signals. The decoded thoughts, in essence translated brain waves, are transmitted using a system that points in the direction of the intended target.

As Shachtman points out, this is just one of several projects the military is funding in the area of what amounts to psychic ops. Last week, intelligence officials released a lengthy report on using neuroscience on the battlefield — including mind control! I'm just excited that this synthetic ESP stuff is being researched in my old hometown of Irvine, which also happens to be in Orange County, where Philip K. Dick's schizo-mind-control novel A Scanner Darkly takes place.

You heard it here first: The psychic apocalypse will start in Orange County, CA.

Army Funds "Synthetic Telepathy" Research [Danger Room]

According to BBC News:

As the cells are living tissue, they are kept separate from the robot in a temperature-controlled cabinet in a container pitted with electrodes. Signals are passed to and from the robot via Bluetooth short-range radio. The brain cells have been taught how to control the robot's movements so it can steer round obstacles and the next step, say its creators, is to get it to recognise its surroundings.

It's a clear case of Doctor Who influencing the course of science. Remember how in the new Doctor Who Cyberman episdoes, all the humans were controlled by Bluetooth before their brains were taken out and plopped into cyberbodies?

Would it be too creepy for these researchers to put their next rat brain into a robot that looks like a Dalek?

Rat-brained robot [BBC News]

Doctors estimate that nerves grow about 1 mm every day. The BBC reports: The patient cannot move his new arms . . . it could be two years before the patient can manipulate his new hands. Hans-Guenther Machens, director of hand and plastic surgery at the Klinikum rechts der Isar clinic, said: "The regeneration process will take a long time." UK transplant expert Nadey Hakim, head of the transplant unit at London's Hammersmith Hospital, said the higher up an amputation on the arms, the easier it was to connect new limbs, as there were fewer nerves and only one bone to connect.

The man may never have proper sensation in his arms and hands, even if he is able to move them. Though it is easier to connect new limbs the higher the amputation is, the opposite is true for establishing sensation. The higher the amputation, the less likely it is that a transplant recipient will feel anything in his or her hands. Several successful hand transplants have been performed over the past 7 years, and their recipients can control their hands and experience hot and cold sensations.

Farmer Has Double Arm Transplant [via BBC News]

Very unlikely. In fact, Alterovitz designed the software that translates gene expression into sound as a diagnostic tool. He mapped healthy genome functions to a harmonic sound, adding dissonant notes for each problem as it arises. According to Technology Review:

He hopes that doctors will one day be able to use his music to detect health-related changes in gene expression early via a musical slip into discord, potentially improving a patient's outcome.

The first step in the gene-to-sound conversion was to pare down multiple measurements to a few fundamental signals, each of which could be represented by a different note. Together, the notes would form a harmonic chord in normal, healthy states and become increasingly out of tune as key physiological signs go awry, signaling disease.

Alterovitz employed mathematical modeling to determine relationships between physiological signals. Much like the various systems in an automobile, many physiological signs work in synchrony to keep a body healthy. "These signals [are] not isolated parts," says Alterovitz. "Like in a car, one gear is working with other gears to control, for example, power steering. Similarly, there are lots of correlations between physiological variables. If heart rate is higher, other variables will move together in response, and you can simplify that redundancy and information."

Alterovitz is not the first to see a musical pattern in genome expression. Genomics experts have been using algorithms borrowed from music to discover genes for several years.

A Musical Score for Disease [Technology Review]

The next steps could be transplanting these blood vessels, or using progenitor cells to grow vessels in engineered muscles or organs. According to the American Heart Association:

If researchers can develop ways to speed the growth of the vessels, non-surgical cardiac bypass procedures could potentially grow new vessels around those blocked by atherosclerosis.

[Lead researcher Joyce] Bischoff said other findings include:

* The cells created a vigorous network of vessels that connected to one another and to the vessels of the host mouse within seven days and continued to transport blood during the four-week study.

* Once combined and implanted, the two progenitor cells arranged themselves into vessels with minimal outside help, i.e., without any genetic alteration or manipulation to improve their growth. This is important because many growth-promoting genes are the same genes that become activated in cancer.

Eventually, predict researchers, Bischoff's technique could be used to treat cancer or heart disease. Imagine just regrowing an artery that had become clogged, or removing a tumor and replacing it with a chunk of tissue that already has healthy veins in it that can attach to your circulatory system.

Researchers Grow Human Blood Vessels in Mice [Eurekalert]

Using fMRI imaging technology, the researchers scanned the brains of people playing games with four different opponents: a computer notebook, a Lego robot, a humanoid robot (pictured), and a human. All game partners made exactly the same moves, so there was no difference in the game itself.

The results were fascinating. According to a release from PLoS One, where the study was published this morning:

The results clearly demonstrated that neural activity in the medial prefrontal cortex as well as in the right temporo-parietal junction linearly increased with the degree of “human-likeness” of interaction partners, i.e. the more the respective game partners exhibited human-like features, the more the participants engaged cortical regions associated with mental state attribution/mentalizing.

Further, in a debriefing questionnaire, participants stated having increasingly enjoyed the interactions most when their respective interaction partners displayed the most human features and accordingly evaluated their opponents as being more intelligent.

This study is the first ever to investigate the neuronal basics of direct human-robot interaction on a higher cognitive level such as mentalizing. Thus, the researchers expect the results of the study to impact long-lasting psychological and philosophical debates regarding human-machine interactions and especially the question of what causes humans to be perceived as human.

What I find interesting about this is the idea that there is a kind of sliding scale of humanness in our brains. Completely non-humanoid, brain-in-a-box computers evoke the least emotional response, and the humanoid evoke the most. Not mentioned in this study, however, is what makes our brains click over into "this is a humanoid" mode. For example, many people who watched the movie Wall-E, whose robots are barely humanoid, had strong emotional reactions to the robotic creatures. Similarly, people respond to a totally non-humanoid creature like HAL from 2001 as if it has human feelings too. So clearly we go by more than physical cues when our brains evaluate whether something counts as humanoid or not.

Can Machines Think? Interaction and Perspective-Taking with Robots via fMRI [PLoS One]

D.E. Shaw & Company has just announced the completion of a massively parallel supercomputer nicknamed Anton, which is designed expressly to model biological processes. Specifically, it will carry out fast simulations of protein folding, modeling how protein molecules fold themselves into the unique shapes that allow them to interact with cellular structures or other proteins and keep your body running smoothly. Being able to model protein behavior quickly will help speed up research on medicines that change the way proteins are folded — fixing ones that fold incorrectly and make you sick, for instance. Though Anton hasn't gone for a test drive in a lab yet, it's been written up in scientific journals.

The New York Times' John Markoff writes:

The new supercomputer is distinguished from other molecular dynamics computing tools like I.B.M.’s BlueGene/L supercomputer and the Stanford Folding@home distributed computing project in that the machine is designed to simulate a very narrow set of problems on biological processes that take place over a millisecond or longer. Molecular simulations are now done as a series of tiny intervals that may be as short as a femtosecond, one billionth of one millionth of a second, and may last no longer than a microsecond, or one millionth of a second.

By looking at time scales that last several orders of magnitude longer than today’s simulations, the Anton team is hoping to discover new kinds of biological processes that would not otherwise be observable. “If you can do 1,000 times longer, real proteins come into play,” Mr. Shaw said in a technical lecture in 2006 at Stanford describing his work.

If only the guy from Pi had known he could have turned his work to something awesome like this, he might not have met such a miserable end. Sometimes life is more hopeful than fiction.

Herculean Computer for Molecular Mysteries [New York Times]

Published this weekend in PLoS Genetics, the study is extraordinary not just because of its futuristic implications, but because of the cool new super-rapid system the researchers used to identify which genes are active during brain development. The technique is called RNA interference, or RNAi:

Dr. Katharine Sepp and her fellow researchers took fresh neuronal cells extracted from embryos of the fruit fly genus Drosophila and screened them using RNA interference techniques. The team tested all genes, one by one in a rapid manner, for their potential role in neuronal development. The team then validated the method in mice.

A combination of live-cell imaging and quantitative analysis allowed Sepp et al to characterize neurons’ morphological phenotypes in response to RNAi-mediated gene knockdown. The researchers focused on 104 evolutionary conserved genes that, when downregulated by RNAi, have morphological defects. The team developed algorithms to help streamline the analysis of the thousands of images created in the process.

The analysis revealed unexpected, essential roles in neurite outgrowth for genes representing a wide range of functional categories including signalling molecules, enzymes, channels, receptors, and cytoskeletal proteins. Results also determined that genes known to be involved in protein and vesicle trafficking show similar RNAi phenotypes.

The researchers believe that this study provides an effective method for future studies of a large variety of genes, including those with important functions in the nervous system.

This research will open up new ways to tinker with brain development, but right now the genes have only been identified in flies and mice. Humans share a lot of genes with both creatures. Still, don't expect to order your supergenius baby next week. Or your army of slave drones.

Identification of Neural Outgrowth Genes Using Genome-Wide RNAi [PLoS Genetics]

The Large Hadron Collider, once operational, will fire beams of protons into each other at energy levels never seen on Earth. We don't really know what will happen when experiments begin (or we wouldn't bother running the experiments), and there are fears that all kinds of weird, hypothetical particles could be created that will devour the planet, or that a small but stable black hole will begin consuming all nearby matter. Steve Giddings, Professor of Physics at UC Santa Barbara, studied the risks. His conclusions:

• The chances of a microscopic black hole forming are impossibly small.
• Cosmic rays smash into particles all the time at very high energies. We probably would have noticed if the universe was being chewed up by an endless torrent of ravenous mini black holes.
• In the incredibly unlikely event that a microscopic black hole forms, it would exist for "a nano-nano-nanosecond." Not long enough to do any damage, in other words.
• Giddings even studied what would happen if a long chain if bizarre events occurred, and a stable micro black hole formed. The result would be...nothing much. Even a stable microscopic black hole would be harmless.

If The Large Hadron Collider Produced A Microscopic Black Hole, It Probably Wouldn't Matter. [Science Daily]

MYTH: Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) and a few select others have a special, super-shooting ability that makes it possible for them to curve the trajectories of the bullets they shoot.

FACT: To change the movement of any object, external force must be involved — so says a little thing called Newton's First Law. After the initial impulse that propels a bullet from the barrel of a gun, a bullet's path will essentially follow a straight line. In long-range shooting, gravity will impose a downward acceleration on the bullet, causing the bullet to travel in a slight parabola. Air resistance, wind, and even the Coriolis effect might also affect the trajectory of the bullet (especially at long distances), but this is quite apart from Wanted's claim that bullets are able to dodge obstacles.

Of course, there's always the possibility that a simple bullet could be more than meets the eye. In 1998, two professors from California — Dr. Chih-Ming Ho of UCLA and Dr. Yu-Chong Tai of Caltech — published a landmark paper detailing their research into the possible application of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) to situations involving fluid flows. What they were exploring is the behavior of tiny transducers (sensors or actuators such as accelerometers or microflaps) that are surrounded by a fluid flow; these MEMS transducers could be as small as a thousandth of a millimeter, or one micrometer. With sophisticated enough micro-devices, a bullet might be able to detect, record, and control its own trail. Ho and Tai, however, are now focusing their research on biomedical applications, so McAvoy will have to look elsewhere.

MYTH: If you concentrate hard enough — and if you're as badass as Wesley Gibson — you can shoot the wings off a fly.

FACT: Let's leave aside for a moment the assumption that flies will remain perfectly still in politeness while you shoot them, and that small considerations like human error, weapon defects, and unpredictable air resistance won't affect the accuracy of a gunshot more than one millimeter. According to the Internet Movie Firearms Database, the gun that James McAvoy is most likely shooting in Wanted is either a Beretta 92 with 9x19mm Parabellum cartridges or a Heckler & Koch USP Compact pistol with .357 SIG cartridges. (In the side image, the Beretta cartridge is at the far left, while the .357 SIG is third from left.) For both these cartridges, the bullet diameter is 9 millimeters.

Wikipedia notes that the common adult housefly is 6-9 millimeters long, and any detailed pest control website will tell you that the wingspan of such a housefly ranges from 12-15 millimeters. This means that the wing of a single housefly, at most, is less than 7 millimeters. Good luck blowing the wings off and leaving the fly intact, Wesley, no matter how supernaturally accurate a shot you are.

Interested in more movie physics fallacies? Check out the Internet Movie Firearms Database for details on the exact guns used in your favorite films so that you can perform the proper calculations yourself — or just take a look at Intuitor's Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics to get an idea of common mistakes. Angelina Jolie can teach you a lot of things, but don't let her teach you physics.

Additional sources: Barrow Borough Council Pest Control, Valent BioSciences Environmental Science Division, and Special Topics MEMS: An Interview with Professor Chih-Ming Ho.

According to LiveScience:

[Lead researcher Andrea] Camperio-Ciani and his team hypothesize that the genes they modeled may cause people of both sexes to be extremely attracted to men, which would lead men with the genes to pursue relationships with other men, while causing women with the genes to have more sexual partners, and become pregnant slightly more often than an average woman.

Scientists involved in the study were also quick to point out that there is no single genetic cause for homosexuality, and that environmental factors are almost certainly involved as well. They also are still completely clueless about female homosexuality. Researchers have yet to figure out what causes lesbianism, and so far nobody has figured out a form of gene therapy I can use to make straight girls want me.

Sexually Antagonistic Selection in Human Male Sexuality [PLoS One via LiveScience]

Wonder of life and all that crap. But seriously — wonder of life! It's pretty awesome. Now if only I could get a robot to do this for me, instead of having to poot out those eggs myself every month, I would be totally psyched.

Human Ovulation Caught on Film [via New Scientist]

A bunch of scientists at New York University made their test subjects watch several movies while recording their brain patterns with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI - basically like stop-motion MRI). We checked, and none of the scientists was named Dr. Clayton Forrester or TV's Frank. In any case, the subjects watched a Hitchcock movie, a portion of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm." They also watched unedited footage of a concert in a park as a control.

The results showed that the brain patterns of subjects watching a "good" movie (Hitchcock) were remarkably similar - 65 percent similar, in fact. The number diminished slightly with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly , and further for the sitcom, with similarity bottoming out with the raw footage (around 5 percent). The researchers did not test the subjects with Monster A Go-Go or Star Force: Fugitive Alien II, but then they probably wouldn't have been able to get informed consent. Image by: 20th Century Fox.

Film Content, Editing, And Directing Style Affect Brain Activity, Neuroscientists Show. [Science Daily]

Well, third is that Reptisaurus is based on an obscure comic book, so it's sure to be a summer blockbuster! Back in the early 1960s, there was a short run of Reptisaurus comic books, which aren't really about very much. Reptisaurus doesn't speak English, so there's a comic book nature special voiceover telling us the true meaning of those images in Repitsaurus' thought bubble. Also, fourth, the movie Reptisaurus, directed by first-timer Chris Ray (yes, he's the son of schlockmeister Fred Olen Ray) . . . will star Gil Gerard!!! Yes, he who was once Buck Rogers in the early 1980s, and just a couple of years ago had stomach-stapling surgery ON TV. So now I'm guessing he's slimmed back down and can wear those tight white pants he worked so well in Buck Rogers. I am so excited about this movie that I am rendered temporarily unable to type. Must . . . watch . . . YouTube . . . trailer. Thanks, Averyguerra!

Scientists say that aging bodies release an enzyme called collagenase that literally eats away at collagen, which in turn makes the skin weak and thin. It sags and becomes easier to bruise or tear. If collagenase could be removed from the body, or the collagen itself rejuvenated, people's skin would stay firm and healthy. There are several possible substances already available that could promote collagen regrowth (you can see one, Restylane, plumping up collagen in the image above).

According to Eurekalert:

The U-M researchers base their conclusions on past studies in which they have explored why certain anti-aging treatments are effective. A 2007 study looked at Restylane, marketed as a dermal filler, and found that injections of the product caused fibroblasts to stretch, promoting new collagen, and also limited the breakdown of collagen.

In another 2007 study, the U-M team tested lotions containing retinol, a form of Vitamin A found in many skin-care products, and found it significantly reduced wrinkles and skin roughness in elderly skin by promoting new collagen. Other U-M studies have shown why some laser treatments work and some less powerful ones do not. Carbon dioxide laser resurfacing is effective because it removes the aging dermis; in the three-week regrowth process, new, young collagen is produced.

Voorhees and his colleagues say they provide needed, independent research on the effectiveness of available and future treatments to counteract skin aging. They have no ties to the manufacturers of products they study.

It sounds like the early twenty-first century may be the first time in human history when you might have no idea how old the person is that you're talking to. With collagen replacement, you might think that you're dating a 25-year-old until she suddenly drops dead of old age.

Why Some Treatments Rescue Aging Skin [Eurekalert]

In 2004 and 2005 Hwang was regarded as top mind in human cloning. His research seemed to show that he'd been able to clone human embryonic stem cells, a huge accomplishment that would open the door to a new era in cloning and medicine.

That all changed in 2006 when news surfaced that he had fabricated his data and unethically obtained eggs from female researchers working in his lab. Disgraced, he left his prestigious position in academia to go work in animal cloning.

And now he's back, promising to keep your beloved K-9 around in cloned perpetuity for nothing more than a huge outlay of cash. Nevermind that he's already shown himself to be an utterly unethical scientist who will stop at nothing for personal gain (that says something abut the BioArts International's CEO Lou Hawthorne, too, who's got three copies of his dog Missy, pictured). Nevermind the valuable lessons Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to teach us all about the evils of cloning pets in the movie "The Sixth Day."

What's important, Hwang and Hawthorne are telling us, is that instead of saying goodbye to our pets, they can effectively live forever. Profit motive aside, I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not.

Source: Associated Press

A few photos and some specimens preserved in alcohol are all that remain of the Tasmanian Tiger - it was hunted to extinction early in the 20th century. Those alcohol-preserved bodies had enough DNA for the scientists to recover. They injected a few genes for cartilage development into mouse embryos, and the genes functioned, basically taking the place of the mouse genes that usually serve that function. It gave the researchers a new look into the genetics of a vanished species.

Pulling usable DNA from a fossilized bone or egg is a far cry from a preserved specimen, so species that were wiped out thousands or millions of years ago are going to be a little harder to bring back. There has been a lot of controversy regarding the Tasmanian Tiger project - is it even possible to bring back a living Tasmanian Tiger? And if it is possible, is it really something we should do? Even if the extinction was brought about by humans, I think the law of unintended consequences is going to bite us in the ass if we go too far down this road. Still, I'd be first in line to ride the automated SUV past the T-Rex enclosure. Image by: Universal Pictures.

Tasmanian tiger DNA 'resurrected'. [BBC News]

The Korean researchers used nanotechnology to build the shape of the virus, then added self-assembling molecules. The result: an artificial virus with the filament shapes seen in the image. Such a shape will allow it to last longer inside a person's body.

Why is this important? Medication delivered directly to cells with an artificial virus is like using a professional assassin to take out your target. By comparison, conventional medication techniques are more like running around a city firing a shotgun in random directions. The other major bonus? That thing totally looks like some kind of microscopic spawn of Cthulhu. Image by: Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Filamentous Artificial Virus from a Self-Assembled Discrete Nanoribbon [Angewandte Chemie International Edition] via Nobel Intent.

Imagine if you could use this magnet to shut off the parts of people's brains that allowed them to think logically, or to turn on the reward system so that they felt really great every time they killed somebody for your evil organization. Seriously disturbing stuff.

Writes Roger Highfield, who wrote the article (and stars in the video above):

The first practical demonstration of TMS was made 23 years ago by Prof Anthony Barker at the University of Sheffield.

Since then, it has become a relatively simple, non-invasive, and painless way to interfere with the workings of the brain, though there is a risk of epilepsy.

Many scientists now use it for basic research. Some have used it to induce electrical changes in the brain's temporal lobes, which have been linked with religious belief, because some sufferers of temporal lobe epilepsy seem to experience hallucinations that bear a striking resemblance to mystical experiences of holy figures.

Many doctors believe it has a role in helping a damaged brain to heal.

TMS offers a kinder alternative to electroconvulsive therapy, the treatment of last resort for people with severe depression who do not respond to drugs.

Others have used it to treat severe epilepsy, and there are efforts to use it to quieten the voices heard by schizophrenics and to track nerve development in infants.

A few even believe that it could actually enhance cognitive skills.

DailyTelegraph via Medgadget

According to the Canwest News Service:

The technology works by beaming waves of hypersonic sound at a pitch that is undetectable by the human ear. The waves continue until they smash into an object such as a person's body. The waves then slow, mix and re-create the original audio broadcast. If the person steps out of the waves, the waves are no longer obstructed and they are rendered inaudible . . . Using the technology, marketers can target an audio message at one person in a crowd, leaving everyone around that person unaware.

[Joe] Pompei's company [Holosonics] manufactured the technology that A&E used. "That's the main thrust of this technology — delivering sound to a very specific area and preventing noise from going elsewhere."

For example, nightclub-goers could hear music delivered through hypersonic methods, while people living nearby would not hear anything. Similarly, an ambulance using a hypersonic sound siren wouldn't disturb households — only cars in front of the ambulance would be able to hear the siren.

While more high-profile uses of the technology may still be a few years away, Pompei said the A&E marketing initiative has led to a deluge of calls from marketers.

The technology scares some consumer groups, including the U.S.-based Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics, which is raising legal questions about what rights people have when it comes to being forced to listen to audio broadcasts in public.

According to the Washington Post, other clinics eschew the nanometer waves for tougher tactics:

The clinic in Daxing, a suburb of Beijing, the capital, is the oldest and largest, with 60 patients on a normal day and as many as 280 during peak periods. Few of the patients, who range in age from 12 to 24, are here willingly. Most have been forced to come by their parents, who are paying upward of $1,300 a month — about 10 times the average salary in China — for the treatment.

Led by Tao Ran, a military researcher who built his career by treating heroin addicts, the clinic uses a tough-love approach that includes counseling, military discipline, drugs, hypnosis and mild electric shocks.

Since ghrelin isn't regulated, a fast food restaurant that wanted to sell more food could easily turn it into an additive in their hamburgers or donuts, essentially "addicting" people to their food. Or making them hungrier so that they buy more.

On the other hand, drugs that tamper with ghrelin could also be made to have the opposite effect. they could be used in diet pills to make you feel less hungry, and make food less memorable or appealing. Reports New Scientist about such drugs:

But they might have unintended behavioural side effects, as well, [researcher Alain] Dagher says. Meddling with ghrelin levels could alter the brain's natural sense of rewards, potentially causing mood changes and even depression.

A diet drug called rimonabant that acts on a similar but separate brain system has been linked to depression and suicide, and although it is on sale in other countries, the US Food and Drug Administration has been slow to approve the pill.

But knocking out ghrelin could help scientists pick apart the hormone's effects on the brain, says Matthias Tschop, an obesity expert at the University of Cincinnati.

"Does the pizza not smell that good anymore? Does the pizza not look as good anymore?" he adds.

Research in mice and rats suggests that the hormone changes how they see and smell food, and the same might be true in humans.

Stomach Hormone turns Hungry People into Junkies [New Scientist]

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]

The key is to lower protein-production in cells, which is why eating less can cause lifespan extension. According to the University of Washington:

In this project, the UW researchers studied many different strains of yeast cells that had lower protein production. They found that mutations to the ribosome, the cell's protein factory, sometimes led to increased life span. Ribosomes are made up of two parts — the large and small subunits — and the researchers tried to isolate the life-span-related mutation to one of those parts.

"What we noticed right away was that the long-lived strains always had mutations in the large ribosomal subunit and never in the small subunit," said the study's lead author, Kristan Steffen, a graduate student in the UW Department of Biochemistry.

The researchers also tested a drug called diazaborine, which specifically interferes with synthesis of the ribosomes' large subunits, but not small subunits, and found that treating cells with the drug made them live about 50 percent longer than untreated cells. Using a series of genetic tests, the scientists then showed that depletion of the ribosomes' large subunits was likely to be increasing life span by a mechanism related to dietary restriction — the TOR signaling pathway.

Researchers Uncover Details About How Dietary Restriction Slows Down Aging [Eurekalert]

Now long gone, Ivanov was the star of the Institute in the early part of the 20th century —- he made his name cross-breeding zebras with donkeys, antelopes with cows, rabbits with guinea pigs, and so on. By the 1920's it was in his head to try humans and monkeys. He drummed up Soviet and private funding and repeatedly tried to inseminate Chimpanzees with human sperm before he reversed the process and tried to impregnate at least one human female. The Institute became his base of operations before he was caught up in a Stalinist purge and exiled to Kazakhstan, where he died in the 1932.

Today several hundred monkeys live on in dilapidated cages at the Institute, and some have escaped into the surrounding forests, where townspeople routinely spot them. Ivanov's attempts at breeding a hybrid primate race are all said to have failed, though, and genetic differences between chimps (our closest genetic relatives) and humans make it unlikely that humanzees are even possible. Still, evidence suggests that our human ancestors were getting busy with chimps even after our two lineages first split. And there's always Oliver.

Photo: LA Times

Source: LA Times

Attendees listened to talks with names like "What product features will influence an animal advocate's decision to move from vegetarianism to In Vitro Meat?" and went to panels devoted to "large-scale tissue engineering." While it's still more expensive to produce cultured meat than it is to raise chickens for the slaughter, the economics are changing as swiftly as the technologies to produce cultured meat. Mostly the barriers to market entry in a few years will be the meat industry itself, which may attempt to scare consumers away from the stuff or pull strings in government block the synthetic flesh via regulations.

For the record, cultured meat tastes just like regular meat — it's tissue-engineered muscle, made of exactly the same biological ingredients as meat from dead animals. It can also be a lot less fatty. Texture is one of the remaining issues, which is why proponents of cultured meat suggest it will first come to market as chicken nuggets and ground meat.

Andrew Revkin of the New York Times Dot Earth blog imagines vat meat as an eco-alternative:

But one could envision someday a model, say, of a solar-powered facility in southern California or Singapore basically turning sunlight and desalinated seawater into growth medium and then tons of cruelty-free, sustainable nuggets of chicken essence.

Whatever works best. If it is harder to move people [to stop slaughtering animals] on ethical grounds than it is to provide a sustainable humane substitute, I'm all for the substitute.

Can People Have Meat and a Planet Too? [Dot Earth]

Try BioTime, a company that promises to start selling "human embryonic progenitor" stem cells "to