They’ve managed to grow full penises and implant them in rabbits. The peni were fully functional and the implanted rabbits seemed to be more horny than non-implanted rabbits, presumably because they needed to check their new equipment worked.

They’re expecting to be able to use this technique for human useage.

Engineered Rabbit Penises Raise Human Hopes | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Terraherz waves, used to make x-ray type machines that can look through clothes and walls and more are also being deployed in airport scanners that look through your clothes. It turns out that under certain circumstances, they can resonate with your DNA, thus destroying it. Lovely.

Slashdot Science Story | How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA.

The damn thing fits on a tabletop and draws electromagnetic waves to it.

The practical applications are for drawing sunlight, so collecting solar energy. It’ll mean you can do away with all those panels, as this should be much more efficient.

First black hole for light created on Earth – physics-math – 14 October 2009 – New Scientist.

Turns out that much of the global warming science is based on data from Yamai in Siberia. The Yamai data has never been released, but it turns out that by looking at tree rings, people have been making assumptions about the temperature 2000 years ago. Apparently using tree rings is fraught with danger, as they aren’t very reliable. However, if you use enough trees you should be OK. It turns out that these people have been only using 12 hand picked trees that support the theses they wanted to prove!

Treemometers: A new scientific scandal • The Register.

Out of 16000 volunteers, it worked for 31% in Thai strains by using

a “prime-boost” approach, in which the first one primes the immune system to attack HIV and the second one strengthens the response.

Vaccine helps prevent HIV infection – AIDS- msnbc.com.

Using the bacteria, waste uranium can be bound to phosphate molecules on the bacterial cells which can then be harvested. This can be used to clean nuclear waste as well as to recycle it. The costs are way lower than the selling price of uranium, which means not only is it green, it’s also profitable.

Using Waste To Recover Waste Uranium.

There are certain things that just  don’t fit into our current theories about how things work. Others that are just beyond what we have workable theories about. This is an interesting list of a few of  those things…

13 more things that don’t make sense – New Scientist.

Marijuana smokers who binge drink seem to have less brain damage than binge drinkers who don’t smoke the grass.

Pot May Protect Brain From Booze – Health News Story – KTVU San Francisco.

It turns out that you can easily pland DNA at a crime scene – any biology undergraduate could do this: it’s easier than planting a fingerprint. One method requires you to have a sample of the actual DNA, the other requires you have access to the DNA information in a police database.

Centralised DNA databases still sound like such a great idea, especially in the UK, so well known for keeping the integrity of these kinds of details (that’s sarcasm, people).

Slashdot Science Story | Scientists Learn To Fabricate DNA Evidence.

So, together with the nano lasers, we now have two new technologies for future growth in computer chip capacity. IBM’s technology makes strands of  DNA self-assemble into shapes such as triangles or squares on top of silicon. This assembly acts as scaffolding for semi conducting nanotubes which become a nano circuit board.

IBM scientists build computer chips from DNA | Hardware – InfoWorld.

This is very very tiny – it’s by far the smallest information carrying line we can create now. Computer chipmakers are running into walls trying to cram more information lines (wires) into a chip, but they can’t make them small enough to fit. This could change all that, if they can build lenses with switching mechanisms small enough so that these lasers can take the place of the wires, which is why people are so very excited about this.

New Nanolaser Key To Future Optical Computers And Technologies.

The battery breakthrough comes from a Salt Lake company called Ceramatec, the R&D arm of CoorsTek, a world leader in advanced materials and electrochemical devices. It promises to reduce dependence on the dinosaur by hooking up with the latest generation of personalized power plants that draw from the sun.

…

Inside Ceramatec’s wonder battery is a chunk of solid sodium metal mated to a sulphur compound by an extraordinary, paper-thin ceramic membrane. The membrane conducts ions — electrically charged particles — back and forth to generate a current. The company calculates that the battery will cram 20 to 40 kilowatt hours of energy into a package about the size of a refrigerator, and operate below 90 degrees C.

…

This means the battery is capable of storing a LOT of power and doing it in a clean, safe manner – so it actually is possible to have one in your house!

New battery could change world, one house at a time.

This comes back a lot – we know people are basically not honest, that lying is taught to us by our parents from an early age. Robert Feldman’s latest study shows that even when we don’t have an agenda, we lie around 12 times per 10 minutes – and these are just the lies we are willing to admit to! Should we have an agenda, we will happily lie with a much greater frequency.

Being honest just isn’t in us!

MinnPost – We lie a lot. And that’s the truth..

Utah scientists have developed a liquid that turns semi solid in the presence of semen, trapping the AIDS virus. If a woman uses the liquid before sex, sperm gets trapped in a gel like structure. By the time the gel melts into liquid, the AIDS virus has died. So it’s not a sure fire contraceptive, but good for the most virulent and dangerous sexual disease. Now if they can only get it to solidify for ALL sexually transmitted diseases…

Bill Gates-funded boffins develop anti-AIDS stealth condom • The Register.

Turns out if you spend much much more money on organic food for health benefits, you can save yourself the cash.

Organic food ‘no healthier’ blow | News.

A new ultrasound device, used in conjunction with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allows neurosurgeons to precisely burn out small pieces of malfunctioning brain tissue without cutting the skin or opening the skull. A preliminary study from Switzerland involving nine patients with chronic pain shows that the technology can be used safely in humans. The researchers now aim to test it in patients with other disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease.

via Technology Review: Brain Surgery Using Sound Waves.

The process that led up to the medical innovation dates back to 2003, when Professor Gudkov came up with the idea of using protein produced in bacteria found in the intestine to protect cells from radiation.

via Cure for radiation sickness found? – Israel News, Ynetnews.