What happens when you are a scientist with alot of money, and nobody to work for but yourself? You become a nude beachcomber who's primary goal is to travel around the world on a boat, collecting samples of bacteria in order to "See who the fuck is living out there".

Interesting aricle on Craig Venter

Wired 12.08: Craig Venter's Epic Voyage to Redefine the Origin of the Species

Scientists have performed successful teleportation on atoms for the first time, the journal Nature reports.

Teleportation breakthrough made

A must-have for mad science laboratories everywhere.

Only you can prevent Gray Goo

] The discovery was made by chance by two biochemists
] conducting research into drugs for cancer and Alzheimer's
] in a medical laboratory at Vanderbilt University,
] Nashville, Tennessee.

Thought this was neat that two guys at vandy in nashville may have found a way to make a blue rose.

Telegraph | News

] It took Adam Arkin and David Schaffer just $200,000 and a
] grad student to develop a potential treatment for AIDS.
] And that scares them.
]
] That's because the therapy itself is a virus. The
] Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory assistant
] professors created a virus altered to latch onto HIV and
] mute its ability to become AIDS. They've tested the
] theory in a computer model, and in cells in a dish. The
] results have been promising, and if they continue in that
] vein, the researchers could begin animal testing by the
] end of this year

Amazing....great idea. Of course, this has the potential to go horribly wrong once it hits a real mammalian system...but the fact that it worked on cultured cells is a start. Of course, this is gene therapy using a retrovirus...something that is *really* not supported at this time after the whole SCIDS fiasco. There was a SCIDS gene therapy using a retrovirus a few years back that made it to human trials - unfortunately, they found that althought the SCIDS (bubble boy syndrome) cleared up, the patients subsequently contracted leukemia due to the retrovirus affecting the expression of an oncogene. Needless to say, gene therapy using retroviruses is unfortunately, risky buisness.

Wired News: Designer Virus Stalks HIV

]
] The British institution of dentures sitting in a glass of
] water beside the bed could be rendered obsolete by
] scientists who are confident that people will soon be
] able to replace lost teeth by growing new ones.

!!!

riiiiiiiiiiiiight:) Interesting - Nano

Grow-your-own to replace false teeth

You may write to inform. You should write to inspire.

Richard Dawkins, on Language and Writing

] To see what might happen if buckyballs got into the
] environment, Eva Oberdörster, an aquatic scientist at
] Southern Methodist University, put some into a fish tank
] at a concentration of 0.5 parts per million, along with
] nine largemouth bass. The buckyball-breathing fish
] experienced significant brain damage after 48 hours.
] Brain-cell membranes were disrupted, an affliction that
] has been linked to illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease
] in humans.
]
] Oberdörster's unpublished study, which was released last
] week, is one of the few completed studies looking at the
] potential risks of nanomaterials. There is some cause for
] concern. Two recent studies documented lung damage in
] animals after they inhaled a type of buckyball called a
] carbon nanotube. Another showed that nanoparticles can
] get into the brain if inhaled.
]
] They're also small enough to cross cell walls and leak
] into the nucleus, the home of an organism's DNA. And, in
] the case of titanium dioxide nanoparticles, they can kill
] bacteria. That's good news in a hospital, but bad news in
] the environment, where bacteria are extremely important
] for maintaining soil fertility, among other things.

Wired News: Big Concern for Very Small Things

] This guy here is Peter Tsou. He's a scientist at NASA's
] Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and he's holding an amazing
] substance called aerogel. Aerogel is a solid, but it is
] 99.8% empty space. In fact, it very closely approaches
] the density of air. It practically IS air. It's still a
] solid, though, and you can even pick it up or set things
] on it.

Very neat.

Hinterlands.cc - 03/26/04: Aerogel

Why would anyone want to build something so destructive? Because by making their own prions, researchers can learn how they work. Learning how these deadly proteins operate is the first step in understanding how to stop their destruction.

Wired News: Science Cooks Up Deadly Proteins