"A transparent token the size of a postage stamp and costing just a penny to make can be used to generate an immensely powerful cryptographic key."

Tom, your a security guru...what are your thoughts on this?

New Scientist - Transparent token is cryptographic key

"Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation Sunday to allow embryonic stem cell research in the state, a direct contradiction of federal limits on the research...The move will attract "the best and the brightest" researchers to California, said Larry Goldstein, a professor at University of California San Diego, and halt the migration of stem cell researchers to other countries where it is permitted. "

This is a very interesting move by California's government. There will be alot of bleeding edge research coming out of California with this in effect (not that that is a change from the norm). Yet another reason why UCSF is moving higher and higher on my potential graduate school list.

Calif. Defies Bush on Stem Cells

"Chinese gamers will be soon able to explore the worlds of the online game Everquest.
Sony and the French games publisher UBI Soft are planning to launch a Chinese version of the multi-player game at the beginning of next year. "

Evidence that Evercrack is slowly taking over the world via mind control.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Everquest goes east

This book is freely available online. Here are a few of the chapter topics:

Miniature Spy Planes: The Next Generation of Flying Robots
Toward Micromechanical Flyers
Design Challenges for Future Wireless Systems
Next-Generation Mobile Wireless Internet Technology
Service Architectures for Emerging Wireless Networks
Wireless Integrated Network Sensors
Reengineering the Paralyzed Nervous Systems
Merging Living Cells and Microsystems Engineering

[Originally from Jeremy. I really enjoyed looking at this book, especially the chapter on Merging Living Cells and Microsystems Engineering. The frontier of engineering, technology, and science is a really interesting place to see bleeding edge kind of ideas pop up. This book is very rad, and you should all take a look! - Nano]

Symposium on the Frontiers of Engineering | National Academies

"Reznor got himself an Atari 2600 home gaming console and spent long afternoons at the house of a friend who had a coveted color RadioShack computer. Soon enough, he had his very own Commodore 64 and began teaching himself to program. He went on to study computer science at Allegheny College and worked briefly as an engineer until he decided the time was right to pursue his dreams. "When you could use computers to make music," he says, "I wanted to be right in there." "

Salon.com Technology | Trent Reznor's pretty hate machines

"For many people, tobacco represents a death sentence -- inflicting nicotine addiction, lung cancer and other ills. But for millions of women in the developing world at risk for cervical cancer, tobacco could eventually be a lifesaver.
University researchers are working on genetically engineering tobacco plants to produce an experimental vaccine against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which can lead to cervical cancer"

Ironic, isn't it?

No Smoke: Tobacco Used in Vaccine

"Mac Dónaill argues that the nucleotides' pairings are a kind of code. Each hydrogen bond has two components: chemical groups called donors and acceptors. If we denote a donor as 1 and an acceptor as 0, then C encodes the pattern 100, and G is 011.
In other words, each nucleotide can be represented as a short sequence of binary code, like the 1's and 0's used to record information in computers.
There is one more element in this code. A and G belong to a class of molecule called purines, and T and C are pyrimidines. Each pairing involves a purine and a pyrimidine. We can denote a purine by 0 and a pyrimidine by 1. Then C becomes 100,1 and G is 011,0.
Represented in this way, says Mac Dónaill, the permissible combinations of A,C,T and G correspond to what computer scientists call a parity code. Each nucleotide has an even number of 1's - it is said to have an even parity.
This makes it easier to spot errors such as non-natural nucleotides. If the error changes any one digit in a nucleotide, its parity changes from even to odd. Odd-parity nucleotides are clearly wrong. "

DNA codes own error correction

"That's the dream, at least. For now, stem-cell science is mostly about getting one's hands on the right stuff. And so, late Monday afternoon, Firpo and research associates Nariman Nasser and Ryan Rodriguez pulled the first 10 tiny vials, each containing 10 million to 20 million stem cells, from vaults of liquid nitrogen in a nondescript UCSF laboratory.
They packed the vials into plastic foam containers of dry ice, two vials per container, and then into cardboard boxes, bound for researchers in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Boston and Worcester, Mass., and Bethesda, Md. "

UCSF is one of the universities I am applying to graduate school I might add:)

One giant step for stem cells / Historic moment as UCSF ships them out to researchers

"The Bush administration has begun a broad restructuring of the scientific advisory committees that guide federal policy in areas such as patients' rights and public health, eliminating some committees that were coming to conclusions at odds with the president's views and in other cases replacing members with handpicked choices."

uggggg

HHS Seeks Science Advice to Match Bush Views (washingtonpost.com)

On the great quest for creating a bioluminescent pumpkin, I have come across this site. Everything you probably never wanted to know about pumpkins. Of course, reading the pollination page has given me a great idea of how I am going to go about doing this, but I figured I would meme it just for fun:)

Pumpkin Nook