Great gift idea for the overly paranoid:)

Germ-Zapping Mailbox

] New work shows the promise, and pitfalls, of
] embryonic-stem-cell research

Economist.com | Cloning and stem cells

] How do you get to know a robot?
]
]
] Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University are betting
] that putting humans and robots on the same soccer team
] will encourage the kind of cooperation that leads to
] understanding.

w00t...soccer playing robots....that will go nicely with Toms irobot, which vaccums our floor:)

Bots, humans play together TRN 123103

damnit.....even though I am pissed about the ipod mini (everything being mini but the price), they have this commercial on their site that is fucking fantastic. Watch it...its pretty cool

Apple - Hardware - Ads - 20 Years of Macintosh 1984-2004

Scientists have developed a vibrating gel that creeps, crawls and slithers just as worms, snails and snakes do. Manoj K. Chaudhury of Lehigh University and his colleagues describe their artificial creepy-crawly--a hydrogel rod made out of the polymer acrylamide and water--in a report published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Good pets?

[Sweet - I wanna make one in the lab - Nano]

Polymer Snail Crawls Like the Real Thing

with this guide, you can't lose.

ROFL -nano

What a Crappy Present - CD Gift Advice, Parents and Kids

SARS neckties.....what will they think of next:)

Infectious Awareables - Directory

] A global ban on all medical applications of human cloning
] was averted by an eleventh-hour deal at the United
] Nations on Tuesday. Last-minute haggling in the aisles of
] the UN General Assembly in New York sealed a compromise
] which postpones debate on a cloning treaty until October
] 2004.
]
] A total ban, backed by the US, the Vatican and other
] Catholic countries, would have caused a deep rift with
] nations such as the UK and the Netherlands that want the
] right to pursue new medical treatments from cloning.
]
] All countries want a UN treaty that will ban the creation
] of cloned human babies. But a US-backed proposal put
] forward by Costa Rica sought to extend the ban to
] "therapeutic" cloning. This aims to use stem cells from
] cloned embryos to treat diseases such as Parkinson's
] disease, but requires the embryo to be destroyed.

Good god. I am glad I have been too distracted by finals to hear about this until now - a full ban on therapuetic cloning would be dumb

New Scientist - Global therapeutic cloning ban averted

] A two-pronged assault on diseases such as cancer and
] arthritis could soon be delivered by a single drug,
] thanks to a breakthrough in antibody engineering.

Molecular engineering is so rad

New Scientist - New antibody delivers a double blow

] The DNA is then amplified using a standard technique
] called polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which takes a
] couple of hours. Lastly, the amplified sample is "typed"
] to give the profile. This also takes a couple of hours.
]
] Charlotte Word, laboratory director at Orchid Cellmark,
] Maryland, which conducted DNA tests on the victims of the
] September 11 attacks, is also surprised by the speed of
] the testing, but agrees it is possible with a good blood
] or saliva sample.
]
] She notes that tests for use in criminal cases often
] takes much longer because samples are scant or
] contaminated.

New Scientist - Fast-track DNA tests confirm Saddam's identity