Implant For Nausea Relief
Newly patented system for relieving nausea already suggested by Lois McMaster Bujold. (re: Lois McMaster Bujold)

Catholic Belief And Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life
Jesuits in fact and in fiction aproach the question of whether aliens might exist, and if they have souls. (re: James Blish)

Earth Skunk Cabbage And Martian Desert Cabbage
Heinlein also wrote about cabbages that could regulate their internal temperature. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Military Sets PHASR On Stun
Send security down to the transporter - and don't forget the PHASR rifles. (re: Gene Roddenberry)

DARPA's Radiation Decontamination (And 'Doc' Smith's Dekon)
DARPA and a host of scientists are working on decontamination techniques for dirty bombs. (re: E.E. 'Doc' Smith)

IMPASS Robot Has Snow Crash 'Smart Wheels'
Neal Stephenson's smart wheels from Snow Crash are ready to move off the drawing board. (re: Neal Stephenson)

Bush Robots - Fingers On Your Fingers On Your Fingers...
From Heinlein to Moravec to MacLeod - bush robots are cool. (re: Robert Forward)

TMSUK Robot Carries Your Bags
John Brunner referred to an implementation of this idea that sounded like more fun. (re: John Brunner)

Remote Control For Humans
NTT's prototype of a consumer version of a galvanic vestibular stimulation machine really works. (re: Various)

Robofish Autonomous Fish-bot At London Acquarium
Autonomous fish-bots based on the common carp are swimming free in the London Aquarium. (re: Michael Swanwick)

Transparent Aluminum Armor Tested By Military
Transparent aluminum armor (ALON) well along in testing, and is considered superior to other see-through choices. (re: Gene Roddenberry)

'Cellborg' Humidity Gauge First Bacterial Cyborg
For the first time, a living bacterium is assimilated borg-style into an electronic circuit. Resistance is futile! (re: Gene Roddenberry)

AESA Radars Used As 'Death Ray' Weapons?
The Pentagon is actively developing electronically scanned array (AESA) radars that could be used as weapons. (re: George Griffith)

TactaPad Puts Your Hands In The Digital World
TactaPad lets you put your hands right into the digital world, allowing you to manipulate objects on the screen as easily as possible. (re: Various)

Siemens Working On Stephenson's 'Mediatron'
Siemens has lowered the price of thin, flexibles displays enough to bring the mediatron, a flexible, updatable newspaper, into reality. (re: Neal Stephenson)

Apple Video iPod - And HG Wells
Apple's iPod is a great way to take movies with you. (re: H.G. Wells)

Lab Mice Unexpectedly Regenerate Limbs, Organs
Mice bred to contract lupus are found to regrow limbs and organs. (re: Neal Asher)

Vast Ocean Glow Confirms Jules Verne Novel
A luminescent area the size of the state of Connecticut was seen by satellite this past week - just like in 20K Leagues Under the Sea. (re: Jules Verne)

Spider Blood In Amber Brings Jurassic Park Closer
Is it possible to get DNA from the blood of this ancient spider. (re: David Brin)

iRobot Scooba And Heinlein's 'Hired Girl' Robot
Heinlein thought of it - iRobot implemented it - it only took us fifty years to catch up to RAH (this time). (re: Robert Heinlein)

Autonomous Soaring Project UAV Cloud Swift
NASA experiments with tiny surveillance planes that can catch air currents autonomously. (re: Roger Zelazny)

Blinkx.tv And Heinlein's Newsbox
Robert Heinlein wrote about something similar two generations ago. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Pioneer 3D Hand Waving Interface
Here's a way to draw pictures in the air - on your PC. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Robot English Teacher From KAIRA
A robotic english teacher is now being used in pilot programs in Seoul, Korea. (re: James Blish)

Chatty Tom Talking Bear From Tomy
Talking teddy bears? Harrison and Aldiss wrote about them in the sixties. (re: Harry Harrison)

Armed Dolphins Freed By Katrina?
Armed dolphins trained to hunt terrorists may be loose in the Gulf of Mexico, freed accidentally by Katrina. (re: Various)

Second Skin Architecture: Mining Deep Mind
Architecture students go deep within and bring back visions of second skins. (re: A.E. van Vogt)

Lower Limit For Nanobot Size Discovered
Scientists and science fiction writers must accept new limits to imagination, thanks to a remarkable first-ever measurement. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Domo Robot: Unstructured Interaction Over Time
Designed specifically to interact with people in unstructred environments for long periods, not just short tasks. (re: Issac Asimov)

VirtuSphere Immersive Virtual Reality
A key enabling technology for a working star trek holodeck. (re: Gene Roddenberry)

First Undersea Restaurant
Ithaa opened just forty years after Jack Vance wrote about them. (re: Jack Vance)

Liftport Closer To Space Elevator Goal
Liftport Group has moved closer to making a working space elevator this past week. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Fab Tree Hab And The Houses Of Iszm
Imagine a society in which living tree structures were used instead of dead lumber; Jack Vance has done it, and so have MIT grads. (re: Jack Vance)

Light Captured In A Crystal
Normally speedy light stopped for a full second in a crystal by Australian researchers. (re: Bob Shaw)

Maru Robot Networked Like I, Robot's NS5
The network-enabled robot has a bipedal, humanoid appearance; software is downloaded via the wireless Internet. (re: Harry Harrison)

Weather As Art
In the aftermath of Katrina, many of us wish that we had greater control over the weather; sf writer John Varley wrote a great story about it. (re: John Varley)

AKROD v2 - Active Knee Rehabilitation Device Human Trials
Human trials of the programmable, portable robotic knee brace called the AKROD will begin soon (re: Various)

Blob Analysis Key To Next Generation Computerized Lie Detectors
Blob analyzing computers can tell if you're lying - maybe. (re: H. Beam Piper)

WolframTones Cell Phone Tones From Cellular Automata
Wintermute back on your cellphone, mon. (re: William Gibson)

Backpack Generator Harnesses Power Of Walking
The brisk strides of hikers converted into electricity. (re: Frank Herbert)

Southampton Remedi Hand Beats Hollywood
Better than Hollywood special effects, it provides more degrees of freedom and advanced feedback control. (re: George Lucas)

Shelter After Katrina
Readers wrote in suggesting that perhaps science fiction writers had some ideas that could be of practical use. (re: Various)

DARPA's Walrus and Griffith's War-Balloons
Not your great-grandfather's airship, the Walrus will be able to lift a fighting force. (re: George Griffith)

Philips Readius E-Reader With Rollable Display
First prototype of a rollable display electronic document reader. (re: William Gibson)

The 'Flying Carpet' of Seyed Alavi
Stand tall - two miles tall - and walk the earth like a giant on this 'flying carpet.' (re: Larry Niven)

Symbiotic Sphere By Space Synapse
Art and space science combine for earthlings - a cheaper way to visit space is coming. (re: Clifford Simak)

Klotho Anti-Aging Gene
A gene in mice and men may give long life, but not without a possible price. (re: Larry Niven)

HELLADS: Lightweight Laser Cannon
Ultra-light High Energy Liquid Lasers are coming. (re: Niven/Pournelle)

The Robotic Blanket Project And The Hunting Robe
The robotic blanket interacts with users; the hunting robe traps them. (re: Clifford Simak)

Wing-Morphing Micro Air Vehicles
Bird-like MAVs use wings based on sea gulls to navigate urban canyons. (re: Jack Vance)

Babelfish Necklace: Environment Translator
Provides a 3D soundscape, 'translating' the environment for the visually impaired. (re: Douglas Adams)

Animaris Percipiere: Walking Robotic Sculpture Stores Wind Energy
Huge clockwork automata beasts roaming the beaches - they live on wind power. (re: Jack Vance)

Tanaka Auto Door
You may be wondering what is so great about a door that opens only just enough to let a person come in or out... besides being cool. (re: Jules Verne)

Carbon Nanotube Ribbon For Space Elevator
An amazing development - real hyperfilaments just like Clarke described for building a space elevator. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Lynntech Non-Lethal Weapon - Jules Verne Right Again
Under DARPA's auspices, Lynntech of College Station, Texas, is developing a non-lethal projectile with a longer range than a Taser. (re: Jules Verne)

Piezer - Homeland Security Orders Verne's 1875 'Leyden Ball'
DARPA is looking for an untethered electro-muscular disruption non-lethal stun weapon. (re: Jules Verne)

Inertial Capacitive Incapacitor: HomeSec Does Verne
With Homeland Security, Physical Optics Corporation is taking a page from nineteenth century science fiction writer Jules Verne. (re: Jules Verne)

NASA And Water Security Working On A Stillsuit
Rather than spend $7K per pound on water, recycling would make more sense - now they have a way to do it. (re: Frank Herbert)

TerminatorBot CRAWLER Gives Danger Two-Fingered Salute
A rescue robot modeled on the movie Terminator. (re: James Cameron)

Node Explorer: Part Hitchhiker's Guide, Part Marauder's Map
A paperback book-sized location-aware media player designed for use at historical sites. (re: Douglas Adams)

NUGGET: NASA's New 'Tricorder'
An experimental instrument could be used to investigate important biological indicators of life - just like Star Trek's tricorder. (re: Gene Roddenberry)

Toshiba Flatbed 3D Display
Remember when R2D2 and Chewbacca were playing a chess-like game with projected pieces? Toshiba invented a table like that. (re: George Lucas)

Doughnut-Shaped Time Machine
Exactly how to generate a gravitational doughnut is not covered in the paper, but Ori has suggestions. (re: H.G. Wells)

Burj Dubai Tower Update
The Burj Dubai tower in the United Arab Emirates is quietly progressing on its goal of being the tallest building in the world. (re: Frank Herbert)

Mars Telecommunications Orbiter Canceled
Bad news for this project; George O. Smith in limbo for a while longer. (re: George O. Smith)

Virtual Girlfriends Updated
Tomb Raider Lara Croft and V-Girl Vivienne, much loved personality-constructs, have both been updated this past week. (re: William Gibson)

Precrime Computer (Minus Precogs) Predicts Robbery
Police in Yonkers use a computer to predict a robbery - and it worked. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Fighting MUSA Robot Unveiled (Kendo, Not Rock'em Sock'em)
The MUSA kendo robot is a logical extension of the traditional "mechanical" aids used for centuries in martial arts. (re: Frank Herbert)

New Materials One Atom Thick Extracted With Micromechanical Cleavage
Science fictional materials are created by extracting individual atomic planes from conventional bulk crystals by using a technique called 'micromechanical cleavage'. (re: Roger Zelazny)

The Vacuum Tube Supercomputer Centre
Offering 'true vector computing at competitive prices', the Supercomputing Centre 'makes maintenance possible with a fork lift instead of tweezers and a magnifier.' (re: Jack Haldeman)

Active Denial System Has Researchers Worried
The 'Sheriff' Active Denial System (ADS), due to be implemented in Iraq by 2006, has some scientists and researchers expressing concerns. (re: H.G. Wells)

Bionic Arm Uses Neuro-Engineering
Scientists at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago attached a unique bionic arm to an injured electrician's left shoulder - just like Steve Austin. (re: Ivar Jorgensen)

Fujitsu Bendable Electronic Color Display - With Memory
The flexible screen has an image memory function that keeps a vivid color picture in view without expending electricity. (re: Larry Niven)

Smallest Implantable Body Batteries
An implantable body battery 100 times smaller than a standard AA battery has been developed by Argonne National Laboratory in cooperation with Quallion and the University of Wisconsin. (re: Alfred Bester)

Remote-Controlled Robotic Hand Performs Breast Exams
A remote-controlled robotic hand will soon enable medical specialists to examine women from anywhere in the world. (re: E.M. Forster)

Jack Into A Cat's Brain
In this study, Garett B. Stanley, Fei F. Li and Yang Dan have literally jacked into the mind of a cat. (re: William Gibson)

Cultured Meat Straight From The Vat
Science fiction fans - start your grills! Two new techniques of tissue engineering may lead to affordable production of lab-grown, cultured meat for human consumption. (re: H. Beam Piper)

Google Earth And VPlanet Explorer
These two products provide functionality similar to the CIC Earth software in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. (re: Neal Stephenson)

Space Ring Latest Implausible Warming Solution
The journal Acta Astronautica has published what is probably the most outlandish suggestion yet to stop global warming on Earth. (re: Stanislaw Lem)

Juke Bot Robot - Kuka Kicks It
If you are looking for industrial-grade techno music for your next party event, look no further than the Kuka Robotics-based Juke Bot. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Philip K. Dick Robot Unveiled At NextFest 2005
The eerie robotic Philip K. Dick unveiled today at the NextFest 2005 event in Chicago is almost an objectification of Dick's fascination with what really makes people human. (re: Philip K. Dick)

NextFest 2005 - Festival Of Technovelgy
Yes, you read that right - technovelgy, ideas and inventions straight from science fiction books and movies. NextFest is a science fiction-lovers dream come true. (re: Various)

Elektron Oxygen Generator Versus Martian Sawgrass
The International Space Station and the fictional Venus Equilateral Station (from a 1942 story by George O. Smith) have a problem in common - a failure of the 'air plant'. (re: George O. Smith)

3D Holographic Images And Heinlein's Stereovision Tank
Harold Garner and his research team have used a gel-filled tank and a Texas Instruments Digital Light Processing (DLP) Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) to generate dynamic three-dimensional views from holograms. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Mini AERCam Robotic Space Vehicle
The nanosatellite-class spherical Mini AERCam (Miniature Autonomous Extravehicular Robotic Camera) is just 7.5 inches in diameter and weighs approximately 10 pounds. (re: George Lucas)

Robotic Bins, Benches Run Amok
A $261,000 display of robotic bins and benches with friendly personalities and roaming ways came to an abrupt end in Cambridge yesterday. (re: Douglas Adams)

Lifelike Robot Repliee Q1 May Need Voight-Kampff Test
The ultra-lifelike robot Repliee Q1 made quite an impression at the 2005 World Expo in Japan. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Robotic Singing Benches And Bins With Adam's GPP
Robotic benches and bins with Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Genuine People Personalities have been created by Greyworld, a group of London artists. (re: Douglas Adams)

HAL-5 Robot Suit
"Humans may be able to mutate into supermen in the near future," said Yoshiyuki Sankai, inventor of the HAL-5 robotic suit. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Rape Trap Like Snow Crash 'Dentata'
South Aftrican inventor Sonette Ehlers has invented an anti-rape device similar to one mentioned in Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash. (re: Neal Stephenson)

NYC Heliostats And Star Wars Orbital Mirrors
Three heliostats in New York City will provide much needed light in the planned Teardrop Park South. The park likes in the shadow of three skyscrapers. (re: Theodore Sturgeon)

Micro Spacecraft To Explore Planets
NASA and The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, CA are preparing to flight test 'micro spacecraft' as early as 2006. Robert Silverberg gave a pretty good description in 1969. (re: Robert Silverberg)

Chinese 'Seed Satellite'
China will launch the first satellite designed specifically for seed-breeding in space. The project includes satellite research and development, mechanism research and simulation tests, as well as the launch and recovery of the satellite itself. (re: Gregory Benford)

Breathe Like A Fish Thanks To Alan Bodner
Alan Izhar-Bodner, an Israeli inventor, has developed a way for divers to breathe underwater without cumbersome oxygen tanks. His apparatus makes use of the air that is dissolved in water, just like fish do. (re: Various)

Futurist Gets Around To Digital Immortality
Ian Pearson, head of the Futurology unit at BT, claims that the wealthy will be able to download their minds into computers by 2050. Science fiction writers have been making the same claim since the 1960's. (re: David Brin)

CIA's 'Silent Horizon' Internet War Games
The CIA has just finished conducting a series of cyberwargames. The intent was to test the ability of government and industry to repond to Internet disruptions, which have grown more damaging over the years. (re: John Brunner)

QinetIQ First Automatic Shipboard Landing Of STOVL Craft
QinetIQ experimental VAAC craft with 'Autoland' technology succeeded in the first fully automatic landing of a short take-off vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft on a ship. (re: Various)

Traversable Wormholes And Time Machines May Not Be Usable
According to a new paper by physics researchers by Roman Buniy and Stephen Hsu, traversable wormholes and time machines cannot be both stable and predictable. (re: Jack Williamson)

Sky Billboards In Fact And Fiction
The Federal Aviation Administration intends to amend its regulations; the FAA wants to make sure it can enforce a law that prohibits "obtrusive" advertising in zero gravity. (re: Jules Verne)

Jack Vance's Incredibly Thin Solar Sail
Jack Vance guessed the thickness of an ultralight solar sail propulsion system Alliant Techsystems and NASA have recently tested. (re: Jack Vance)

Lumaray FL6 LED Flashlight
Okay, it's not a lightsaber - but it looks like you might be able to find your seat in a darkened cineplex with style. (re: George Lucas)

Making A Living From Space Junk
In an unusual act of generosity, the Soviet space program has been showering valuable metal scraps on the villages surrounding the Plesetsk Cosmodrome for more than forty years. (re: George Lucas)

Scientists Succeed At (Cryogenically Enhanced Magneto-Archimedes) Levitation
Scientists at the University of Nottingham have succeeded in (Cryogenically-Enhanced-Magneto-Archimedes) levitating some of the heaviest elements in nature, including lead and platinum. (re: Isaac Asimov)

Dubai World Island Earth
Al Nakheel Properties are working on a Dubai island project that will consist of between 250 and 300 islands shaped like the continents of the world - The Dubai World Islands. (re: Larry Niven)

Self-Replicating Modular Robots
Cornell scientists have been working on machines that replicate themselves. Their strategy is to use small modules that attach to each other with electromagnets. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Product RFID Tags Now Play Jingles
A computer science student from Durlach in Germany has worked out a way to store a tune on the radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags now attached to many consumer goods. (re: Greg Bear)

Mars Telecommunication Orbiter - Interplanetary Broadband
Lockheed Martin Space Systems is expected to land a $500 million contract to build the Mars Telecommunication Orbiter, intended by NASA to pioneer the use of lasers in planet-to-planet communication (re: George O. Smith)

Flexible Fabric Speakers Are Coming
A Korean research firm has announced that it has developed a technology for the mass production of sound speakers that are as flexible as fabric. (re: Bruce Sterling)

Cellphone Towers: Modern Day 'Message Trees'
Cellphone towers disguised as trees? Sounds like the message tree from a 1958 James Blish novel. (re: James Blish)

Eye Ball R1 Remote Surveillance Camera
The Eye Ball R1 is a compact wireless 360° mobile display system. It can be used in tactical operations by law enforcement personnel. If only they team up with the Rotundus robot guys... (re: Larry Niven)

Anemone Clock, Hug Shirt, Robot Dentist, Eternal Fridge Light? (They Must Be Fiction)
I sometimes read about devices and things that are so futuristic that they must be fiction. Four such items are described in this article. (re: Various (and none))

UCB - University of California Bone Regeneration
UCLA professors Kang Ting and Ben Wu are developing a new molecule they’ve named University of California Bone (UCB). This technology may be the most significant advance in bone regeneration in decades. (re: J.K. Rowling)

Snake Robot Roundup: Part Two
More snake robots - the Polybot-Based snakebot locomotion study and the OmniTread snakebot (most recent of its kind). (re: Various)

Snake Robot Roundup!
The snakebots are coming; slithering, grinding, undulating robots that slide on their bellies like a reptile across the Earth (and maybe other planets). (re: Various)

Hypersonic Sound (HSS) - Loudspeaker Just For You
Hypersonic Sound (HSS) technology does for sound what lasers did for light - provide a far more focused stream of energy over a greater distance with less dispersion. (re: E.E. 'Doc' Smith)

First Asteroid Belt Found Around Star Like Our Sun
An asteroid belt may have been found surrounding a star much like our own Sun, according to Dr. Charles Beichman of CIT. His team used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to make the discovery. (re: Niven/Pournelle)

New Phase Of Ice May Exist
A new phase of ice may exist at temperatures between 4 degrees Kelvin to 50 degrees Kelvin, at high pressures, according to researchers at the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center. (re: Kurt Vonnegut)

Minority Report Glove Interface From Raytheon
Defence contractor Raytheon is working on a computer interface taken from the movie Minority Report, which starred Tom Cruise. (re: Stephen Spielberg)

Mars Crew Selection Fact And Fiction
According to a recent article in The Scientist, psychological factors would seriously challenge the crew of a manned Mars mission. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Find Extraterrestrial Civilizations By Their Works
Should we be looking for extraterrestrial civilizations, rather than just listening for them, as we do in the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project? That is the suggestion of a French astronomer, Luc Arnold (re: Larry Niven)

Reduce Global Warming By Blocking Sunlight
At a conference last year on global warming, distinguished astrophysicist and sf author Gregory Benford pointed out that the various measures proposed to stop global warming will not do the job soon enough. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

'Pleistocene Park' For Woolly Mammoths?
Scientists with the Mammoth Creation Project hope to find a frozen woolly mammoth specimen with sperm DNA. The sperm DNA would then be injected into a female elephant; by repeating the procedure with offspring, a creature 88% mammoth could be produce (re: David Brin)

Nanostructured Thermoelectric Devices (And John W. Campbell, Jr.)
Nanostructured thermoelectric devices may have a wide variety of practical applications, generating electricity from heat; sounds a lot like John W. Campbell's thermelectrium from a 1935 story. (re: John W. Campbell, Jr.)

Sony Patents Ultrasound Brain Beam Matrix
Now entertainment giant Sony has patented a method of beaming an artificial world of experience - The Matrix - directly into your brain using ultrasound. (re: Vernor Vinge)

Chemical Guidebook To Extraterrestrial Life Sought
Would you know extraterrestrial life if you found it? US scientists are working on a chemical guidebook to create a definitive method to determine whether extraterrestrial rocks have ever harbored life. (re: Michael Crichton)

Prairie Dogs Can Talk, Says Scientist
According to Dr. Slobodchikoff, Professor of Biology at Northern Arizona University, prairie dogs are capable of referential communication. (re: H. Beam Piper)

Trauma Pod Battlefield Medical Treatment System
DARPA has awarded a $12 million contract to develop an automated medical treatment system that can recieve, assess and stabilize wounded soldiers immediately following injury. The trauma pod is used to treat soldiers on the battlefield using advanced (re: Frank Herbert)

Transgenic Zoo Needs Herbert's Fences
Peter Yeadon has been thinking about a Transgenic Zoo for Toronto; it is an ongoing study of nanotechnology and new medical techniques. (re: Frank Herbert)

Lunar Dust Fountains Due To Electrostatic Charges
A great article on NASA's website points out how science fiction author Hal Clement predicted in a 1956 short story that electrostatically charged lunar dust particles might actually suspend themselves above the surface: (re: Hal Clement)

Philip K. Dick's Bubblehead Brainiacs
Over-expressing the protein CPG-15 in rats gives them bigger brains; these enlarged brains have grooves and furrows like evolved mammalian brains with larger surface areas. (re: Philip K. Dick)

TETWalker: Shape-Shifting Robot Swarm
A tetrahedral walker, or TETWalker robot, was demonstrated recently at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. This bot is a prototype member of an autonomous nanotechnology swarm that can alter their shape to flow smoothly over rocky terrain, or combine (re: Neal Stephenson)

Dying Stars And Planets To Live On
Astronomers and astrophysicists have long thought that the best place for life as we know it is a planet in the "habitable zone" - the range of orbits that leads to planets with liquid water - surrounding a main sequence star like our sun. Science fi (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Grand Odyssey Futurecast System - You Star!
Space Child Adventure Grand Odyssey, an animated film showing at the Aichi Expo 2005, has a very special star - you! Visitors to the Mitsui-Toshiba Pavilion get a full-face high resolution digital scan; these faces are edited into that perform (re: Ray Bradbury)

RepRap: Self-Replicating Rapid Prototyping
A self-replicating, rapid prototyping machine developed at the University of Bath in England could transform the nature of manufacturing. People could produce everyday household objects in their own homes and put them together. (re: Philip K. Dick)

IVF Parents Pick Sex, Alter Balance Of Nature
Should parents undergoing fertility treatments like IVF have the right to choose the sex of the baby? Lawmakers in Britain have split over this issue, reigniting the debate over "designer babies". (re: James Blish)

Smart Buildings And Network Security
Smart buildings, which use building automation systems (BAS) to put air temperature, lighting and security on a common network, are popping up on college campuses and in the corporate world. So are security problems. (re: William Gibson)

Cigarette Lights Self (Not That We Needed It)
The cigarette has a tip anointed with sulphur and phosphorus. Striking the tip against a rough pad on the side of the packet ignites the cigarette, which is reinforced with slivers of bamboo or tobacco leaf to stop it breaking. (re: Robert Heinlein)

ShasPod - Compact Talmud Study Aid
The ShasPod is a twenty-gigabyte iPod loaded with 2,711 shiurim, one for each page of the Talmud. A shiur is a brief (30-60 minute) discussion by a religious teacher. Each shiur is in English mixed with Aramaic (the language of the Talmud) and some h (re: Frank Herbert)

Siemens Communicator Badge: Trek-style Communicator
The device can be worn like a badge, or on a lanyard around your neck. Commands from the user are transmitted via Bluetooth to a central home communications server. The server uses proprietary voice recognition software to convert your voice commands (re: Star Trek)

Life Detector Robot To Find Life On Distant Worlds
Zoe, which was developed by Carnegie Mellon University, detects life by looking for natural fluorescence from cells that contain chlorophyll. The robot can also spray four special dyes on soil samples; they fluoresce only when they bind to one of fou (re: Frank Herbert)

Bacillus Loquacious: AI-2 and the Talkative Bacterium
"When we think about bacteria, we think about them as being tiny single-celled organisms that live these very asocial reclusive lives," said Bonnie Bassler, a molecular biologist at Princeton University. "In fact, bacteria have developed language, an (re: Greg Bear)

DARPA's 'BigDog' Robot Now In Puppy Stage
The Defense Advanced Research Project Authority (DARPA) Learning Locomotion project seeks to create algorithms that help multi-legged platforms learn to walk in varied terrain. DARPA will be handing out a series of $600K-$800K research grants to teac (re: William Gibson)

Did Giant Space Clouds Cause Mass Extinctions?
It's possible, according to a computer model prepared by researcher Alex Pavlov at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The model shows that "dramatic climate change" may occur when interstellar dust accumulates in the Earth's atmosphere due to the p (re: Arthur Conan Doyle)

Moon Dust Substrate For Solar Panels
Simulated moon dust has been used to make the substrate of a solar cell, according to University of Houston researchers. The fine grey powder is 50% silicon dioxide, along with a mixture of oxides of twelve different metals (including aluminum, magne (re: John W. Campbell)

Microwire Data Storage
Microwires 3 to 5 times thinner than a human hair are being studied as a possible data storage alternative to CD-ROMs. Microwire technology originated in the old Soviet Union; they are now being studied elsewhere. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Brain 'Pacemaker' For Depression Sufferers
For the first time, deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been shown to treat people suffering from major depression. DBS has been used to successfully treat epilepsy and Parkinson's. (re: Larry Niven)

Teddy Bear Robotic Companions
A plush robotic teddy bear sat on display at TechFest, a two-day Microsoft event that started today. Steven Bathiche, a research and development program manager, is looking to go beyond the bears you know. (re: Harry Harrison)

Invisibility Using Plasmonic Covers
Researchers Andrea Alu and Nader Engheta of the University of Pennsylvania have written a paper on how plasmonic resonance effects might be used to render an object invisible. (re: H.G. Wells)

Young Blood Found To Revive Aging Muscles
Dr. Thomas Rando and his group have been studying specialized cells called satellite cells, which are the stem cells in muscles. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Invisible Galaxy Of Dark Matter Discovered
In 2001, a group of astronomers led by Neil Trentham of the University of Cambridge predicted the existence of dark galaxies - vast collections of dark matter. Dark galaxies are thought to form when the density of matter in a galaxy is too low to cre (re: Edmond Hamilton)