Here is my blue NetNewsWire icon in my dock. ... In my dock, I have many items. I find the target by placement in the dock order, and then by color/ visual recognition of the item to be selected. While it is true that NetNewsWire's icon is mostly blue, I do not fing that a problem when compaired with most of the other icons in my dock. See Dock Icons

On the other hand, I would not mind a subtle RSS bar on the icon. as indicated in the Dock image that includes NetNewsWire. See Dock Icons

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - A dwarf mouse named Yoda has celebrated his fourth birthday, making him the oldest of his kind and far beyond 100 in human years, the University of Michigan Medical School says.

Yoda owes his longevity to genetic modifications that affected his pituitary and thyroid glands and reduced insulin production - and which left him a third smaller than an average mouse and very sensitive to cold.

On the other hand, at the human equivalent of about 136 years, Yoda is still mobile, sexually active and "looking good," said Dr. Richard A. Miller, associate director of research at the school's geriatrics center.

Posted: Sun, Mar 28, 2004, 12:22 PM ET (1722 GMT)

This is really fast. There is a small mistake in the article. The booster accelerated the X-34A up to Mach 5, then the X-34A accelerated away from the booster for a total of 11 seconds. ... Let's see, Mach 5 to Mach 7 in 11 seconds. ... Now that was a kick in the pants!

An X-43A, a NASA vehicle designed to test hypersonic technologies, performed a successful test flight Saturday, reaching a speed of Mach 7 during its brief, unmanned flight. The X-43A and its Pegasus-derived booster rocket were deployed from a B-52 off the California coast at about 5:00 pm EST (2200 GMT) Saturday. The booster accelerated the X-43A to Mach 7 at an altitude of nearly 29,000 meters before separating. The X-43A then ignited its air-breathing scramjet engine, using liquid hydrogen as fuel, for a brief ten-second mission, after which the vehicle glided for several minutes before crashing into the Pacific Ocean as planned. The flight was the second for the X-43A program, after the initial flight failed in June 2001 when the booster rocket lost control several seconds into the flight. A third and final X-43A flight is tentatively planned for later this year. However, NASA cancelled a follow-on program, the X-43C, earlier in the month as part of an effort to reorganize its research programs to better fit the needs of the new exploration initiative.

Image Right: An estimated 10,000 galaxies are revealed in humankind's deepest portrait of the visible universe ever. Photo credit: NASA/ESA/S. Beckwith(STScI) and The HUDF Team.

Astronomers today unveiled the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever taken. A one-million-second long exposure taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) may reveal the first galaxies to emerge from the so-called "dark ages" shortly after the big bang.

I noticed this took place in Seattle. I was wondering if any of the WWPP people got a chance to see any of this?

Beams cut need for cancer surgery Cancer cells can be selectively targeted Scientists are perfecting a 'virtual scalpel' which uses ultrasound beams to kill cancer cells without the need for surgery. Unlike radiotherapy and drugs, the technique also leaves healthy tissue next to a tumour undamaged. Preliminary trials in the UK and China show it is effective - and has fewer side effects than traditional treatment. Details were presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Seattle.

Read the entire article -> BBC article

The article linked to in this story could scare the shit out of some people and cause others to want to avoid research into transgenic accidents. I just think that it also points out the commonality of life. We are all related. It could also scare those people that believe that, We are what we eat." But it could also give some very interesting directions into the study of evolution and the studies of evolution of diseases.

Pigs grown from fetuses into which human stem cells were injected have surprised scientists by having cells in which the DNA from the two species is mixed at the most intimate level.

It is the first time such fused cells have been seen in living creatures. The discovery could have serious implications for xenotransplantation - the use of animal tissue and organs in humans - and even the origin of diseases such as HIV.

The adult pigs that had received human stem cells as fetuses were found to have pig cells, human cells and the hybrid cells in their blood and organs.

"What we found was completely unexpected. We found that the human and pig cells had totally fused in the animals' bodies," said Jeffrey Platt, director of the Mayo Clinic Transplantation Biology Program.

Monkeys can control a robot arm as naturally as their own limbs using only brain signals, a pioneering experiment has shown. The macaque monkeys could reach and grasp with the same precision as their own hand.

"It's just as if they have a representation of a third arm," says project leader Miguel Nicolelis, at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Experts believe the experiment's success bodes well for future devices for humans that are controlled solely by thought.

HARVARD-SMITHSONIAN CENTER
FOR ASTROPHYSICS NEWS RELEASE
Posted: September 18, 2003

The early universe was a barren wasteland of hydrogen, helium, and a touch of lithium, containing none of the elements necessary for life as we know it. From those primordial gases were born giant stars 200 times as massive as the sun, burning their fuel at such a prodigious rate that they lived for only about 3 million years before exploding.

The Wooden Mirror project is an art installation, and as such the goals leading to its creation are a bit vague. The piece explores the line between analog and digital. In the essence of the piece is the notion of inflicting digital order on a material that is as analog as it gets ñ wood. I was hoping to take the computational power of a computer and video camera , and seamlessly integrate them into the physicality warmth and beauty of a wooden mirror. The piece reflects any object or person in front of it by organizing the wooden pieces. It moves fast enough to create live animation. The simple interaction between the viewer and the piece remove any questions regarding how to operate the piece, it is a mirror. The non reflective surfaces of the wood are able to reflect an image thanks to the involvement of the computer that is manipulating them to reflect more or less light as they tilt towards or away of a light source. The image reflected in the mirror is a very minimal one. It is, I believe, the least amount of information required to convey a picture (Less than an icon on a computer and without color) It is amazing how little information this is for a computer, and yet how much character it can have, (and what an endeavor it is to create it in the physical world). The Mirror produces a distinctive sound when someone moves in front of it. It is the sound of hundreds of tiny motors. The sound is directly correlated to the motion of the person in front of it, and gives a very pleasing secondary feed back to the image.

What mothers eat during pregancy could have a fundamental and lifelong effect on the genes of their children, suggests an intriguing new study in mice.

Researchers found they could change the coat colour of baby mice by feeding their mothers different levels of four common nutrients during pregnancy. These altered how the pups' cells read their genes. As a result the mice were also less prone to obesity and diabetes than genetically identical mice whose mothers received no supplement.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Fancy living another 100 years, or more? Some experts said on Saturday that scientific advances will one day enable humans to last decades beyond what is now seen as the natural limit of the human life span.

"I think we are knocking at the door of immortality," said Michael Zey, a Montclair State University business professor and author of two books on the future. "I think by 2075 we will see it and that's a conservative estimate."

I went away for about a week. Most of the time I was driving but I did take time to shoot a few pictures. Most of these pictures are of places you have seen before, but maybe not. Anyway I hope you enjoy these photos. I had a really nice time and saw many things in San Francisco. Then I headed back towards San Diego and I was going to drive along the coast to take some more pictures, but it was foggy, so I turned left.

Link to Jax San Francisco Trip

The key gene that keeps embryonic stem cells in a state of youthful immortality has been discovered.

The breakthrough may one day contribute to turning ordinary adult cells into those with the properties of human ESCs. This would end the need to destroy embryos to harvest the cells for new medical treatments.

ESCs are unique as they are "pluripotent" - capable of differentiating into the different cells in the body - and hold great potential for treating damaged or diseased organs. But until now scientists did not know how a stem cell renews itself or develops into an new kind of cell.