[Cornelia Hesse-Honegger via Neatorama]

Tree bug from Parvin Road near Hanford WA, USA
The right feeler lacks a section
Harlequin bug near Three Mile Island, USA
The Scutellum is curved and its yellow ornament is asymmetrical.
Soft Bug larva from Posonby, Sellafield, UK
Both of the left wing tips are damaged.
Tree bug, Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland
Right tip of the neck plate is flattened
Housefly mutant ‘aristapedia'
Parts of legs are growing out of the feelers and the eyes are yellow
Squash bug from Rohr, Canton Aargau, Switzerland.
Left cover wing is a short stump.
Soft bug from Pripjat, Ukraine
Right side middle leg is short with no foot but two claws
Damsel bugs Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland
Wings of uneven length and disturbed neck plate
Scentless plant bug from Würenlingen, Canton Aargau, Switzerland
Left cover wing is blown up like a balloon
Tree bug from Slavoutich, Ukraine
Right feeler is disturbed.
Drosophila melanogaster
The left wing is a little clump
Ladybird beetle near Three Mile Island, USA
Dent and a black growth on wings.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo are working to create holographic displays that mimic the sensation of interacting with solid objects. Sadly, there are none of the holodeck's forcefields at work to turn light into a solid object. Instead, the researchers place a reflective marker on a person's hand and use Nintendo Wiimotes to track the position of the hand relative to the hologram. As the hand gets near the hologram, the display triggers a feedback mechanism, which feeds acoustic radiation pressure to the hand, creating the sensation that the person is touching an object. At the same time, the hologram reacts to the hand's position, and can be batted, grabbed, or floated based on the hand's position.

At the moment, it is all an extremely clever illusion, and one in need of greater development. But I hope that the researchers plan on sticking to holograms of balls and don't get around to creating a holographic Professor Moriarty any time soon.

[Physorg]

New Scientist reports that scientists from the Slovak Academy of Sciences investigating the vegetation around the nuclear plant have noticed interesting mutations:

Compared to the plants grown in normal soil, the Chernobyl soya produced significantly different amounts of several dozen proteins, the team found. Among those are proteins that contribute to the production of seeds, as well as proteins involved in defending cells from heavy metal and radiation damage. "One protein is known to actually protect human blood from radiation," [team member Martin] Hajduch says.

The mutated plants are now being studied to see the effects of radiation and potentially attempt to create radiation-proof plants necessary for space travel, according to Hajduch, but even he seems disappointing with the lack of Simpson-esque irradiated mutants; the article quotes him lamenting that "[t]here are no dogs with two heads."

Chernobyl fallout could drive evolution of 'space plants' [New Scientist]

According to Nature blog The Great Beyond:

The council says Americans living in 2006 were exposed to over seven times more radiation from such scans than those living in 1980, mainly due to computed tomography and nuclear medicine. The council's executive vice president Kenneth Kase says the increase was "not a big surprise to anybody" and doctors are emphasising that such tests are vital in modern medicine (ABC News) . . . The American College of Radiology is warning about overly-high numbers of radiation-based medical tests. The college puts this down to ‘self-referral', where non-radiologists buy imaging equipment and then refer their patients to have tests on these machines (press release).

"There is a fundamental problem when the person ordering the study has a direct financial interest in maximizing the use of a particular piece of equipment," says James Thrall, chair of the College's Board of Chancellors (Reuters). "… Unfortunately, one of the things we have seen in the imaging world is that many physicians look at imaging as the solution to their financial problems."

The health implications of this incredible increase in radiation exposure remain unclear, but what's certain is that some doctors are over-prescribing scans and medical imaging.

Cleveland Plain Dealer has a few simple steps you can take to minimize radiation exposure at the doctor's office, and The Great Beyond has the full story.

Tardigrades have perfected an extreme form of hibernation called an anhydrobiotic state, meaning roughly that they can expel all of the water from their cells and go into a state of suspended animation. They usually only live for about a month when left in an active state, but once they dry themselves out, they can survive the harshest conditions the world can throw at them for decades on end.

Evolving to live through cold and drought makes sense — these types of conditions occur all the time on Earth. But extreme radiation? Vacuum? Some scientists believe these traits are just a byproduct of their hibernation, but in truth it remains a mystery.

Are tardigrades aliens from a distant world who came to Earth on an asteroid? Probably not — they're genetically related to the well known worm c. elegans. But last fall, the European Space Agency sent the little guys into orbit as part of the BioPan-6 mission to see how well they'd do floating above their homeworld, exposed to outer space. We're still waiting on the results of those experiments, which hopefully will shed light on why these mysterious little creatures evolved to become the toughest life on the planet.

Photo: Brett's Blog

RadBall was developed by Dr. Steven Stanley at Nexia Solutions. It is designed to be used in nuclear power plants and nuclear research facilities to detect specific radiation sources in inaccessible or dangerous areas. The green plastic globe is filled with polymer chains, and is placed inside a reusable lead sheath pierced with more than 100 small holes. As radiation passes through the lead, it reacts with the polymer chains and causes them to cross-link. This shows up as a visible markings inside the ball, sort of like a holographic radiation map.

Once the RadBall has been left in place long enough, it can be analyzed by shining a light through it. The lines and shapes inside can be interpreted by software to show a map of radiation sources, including their intensity and type. They will be cheaper than other detailed radiation scanners, claims Dr. Stanley, and they require no power source or prolonged human exposure in the irradiated area. Do not taunt RadBall. Images by: Nexia Solutions & BBC News.

On the ball. [The engineer online]

The Sun is obviously the biggest reason we're alive today — without it Earth would be a lifeless, frozen lump of rock at best. The same is probably true of the oceans, Earth's distance from the Sun, and so on. But Earth's magnetic field doesn't get enough credit (apart from a few terrible movies like "The Core") as being just as important as any of those ingredients for keeping life on Earth. Without it, highly energetic particles from the Sun would fry life, shatter life-giving molecules floating in the air and water, and strip away most of our atmosphere (witness Mars, whose thin atmosphere has been ravaged by solar winds).

In just a few centuries that may be a reality. Even if the field doesn't disappear entirely, in a weakened state it could let enough radiation in to cook the vast communications networks and power girds that have sprung up around the planet in the last century. But searching through ancient copper mines in Israel and Jordan has turned up some interesting new evidence. By looking at layers of metal slag that aligned themselves based on the magnetic field that was present as they cooled thousands of years ago, scientists at Scripps Institute of Oceanography and UC San Diego have managed to reconstruct the field's strength. What they found was startling: about 2,000 years ago Earth's magnetic field peaked in strength, and it's been weakening ever since.

The field itself isn't going away any time soon — it's powered by oceans of molten metal churning at the center of the planet — but for reasons we don't quite understand, every quarter million years or so it reverses polarity. Each time it does this, there's a period of a few days to a few hundred years where the field becomes so weak that it's almost non-existent, and that's what we seem to be heading for.

What does this mean for life on Earth? Bottom line is we don't know. Some scientists have argued that mass extinctions line up with field reversals in Earth's past, while others say that when the field flips it flips too fast — maybe over the course of a week or less — to do anything more than cause a glitch in your cell phone reception.
The one thing we can take comfort in is that the decline has so far been slow and steady, so humans alive today probably won't have to worry much.

But our fuzzy understanding from the geologic past suggests that as the field weakens further, it's polarity can wander all over the place, flopping back and forth like a fish out of water. If that's true, in a couple of generations global warming from CO2 in the atmosphere might be the least of our worries.

Source: Scripps Institute of Oceanography

In case you can't read the small print, here's the money shot:

Today's telephone system, solid state devices, miniaturization, and the new science of space rocketry and communication will be melded together so that no one wearing his telephone can ever become lost in the woods.

Protectan is being developed with Department of Defense funding as part of their efforts to protect soldiers from weapons like dirty bombs. It could also be used by astronauts and future space travelers, and will surely be a hot commodity after the apocalypse. It can be taken before or after radiation exposure - helpful, since radioactive zombies don't usually call ahead. Unlike some similar drugs being developed, Protectan only costs $200 per dose and doesn't require the assistance of a doctor to take it. Just pop one whenever your rad meter trips and you're good to go! Photo by Getty Images.

Cleveland BioLabs lands defense contract. [Buffalo News]