Cloned, genetically altered goats producing spider silk in their milk sounds like something out of The X-Files, but it was in all the papers last week when a company called Nexia revealed it had cloned three goats (Clint, Danny and Arnold), and explained why. The cloning of goats brings to four (sheep, mice, cows …
Tag: science
Arthritis
I’ve probably thought more about arthritis over the years than most guys my age, because my Mom has had rheumatoid arthritis since before I was born. This week I’ve been thinking about it more than usual, though, for two reasons: one, I’m writing a book on the subject and two, a new arthritis drug has …
A new solar system
The idea that planets orbit most of the stars in the universe has such a firm hold on our imagination, thanks to Star Trek and Star Wars, that most people are surprised to hear we only found the first planet outside our solar system in 1995. Only this past week have we confirmed the existence …
Digital cameras
My wife and I recently returned from a vacation and, naturally, forced family members to sit through a slide-show detailing our adventures. There was, however, one big difference between our slides and the family slides I remember from childhood: my “slides” were shown on a computer, and involved no film whatsoever. That’s because they were …
Rockets
I have vivid memories from when I was a kid in Texas of travelling out into the countryside to watch my oldest brother and his friends launch rockets. This wasn’t some ’60s radicals’ attempt to overthrow the government of Swisher County, but a new hobby called model rocketry. The rockets came in all sizes, from …
Air
A report this week that air pollution, particularly ground-level ozone, is a more serious problem in Canada than previously thought got me to thinking about this stuff that we breathe. What is air? It’s a question we don’t ask very often, because we generally take air for granted. Air is the mixture of gases comprising …
The solar system
Voyager 1, now in interstellar space, sent back a final present a few years ago: a “family portrait” of the solar system, showing a shrunken sun and several tiny flecks of light–the planets. One of those flecks, a tiny blue dot, is the Earth. The past 20-some years has seen an explosion in planetary knowledge …
Hearing aids
Hearing is a remarkable sense that most of us take for granted–but not everyone can. Due to physical damage or simple aging, many people have lost some or most of their hearing. Enter the hearing aid, a device for amplifying sound and directing it into the ear. The original hearing aid was the hand cupped …
Nanolithography
My roommate in university had a quirk that annoyed teachers no end: he had the smallest handwriting of anyone I’ve ever met. While I used big old Bic pens on wide-lined notebook paper, he was using fine-point mechanical drafting pencils on the narrowest-lined paper he could find, and still leaving lots of room for any …
Wearable computers
Computers have become so ubiquitous they’re in most of our gadgets and on most of our desks. But guess what? They’re on the verge of becoming even more widespread: soon, we may be wearing them. The quick definition of a wearable computer is one that is always with you (and always on), is comfortable and …
Biometrics
Are you fed up with having to carry 2,762 separate plastic cards in your wallet for buying gas, getting Air Miles, withdrawing money, renting videos and collecting frequent-ice-cream-eater points? Then you’ll be glad to hear about biometrics. Biometrics is the measurement of tiny differences among individuals for the purposes of identification. Fingerprinting is probably the …
The Saga of NEAR
Monday, a plucky little spacecraft called NEAR, for “Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous,” is going to attempt to make space exploration history. Back in February of 1996, the 805-kilogram spacecraft, a short, stubby cylinder with four solar panels forming a cross shape at one end, was launched to rendezvous and orbit the asteroid Eros, whose orbit …
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